Short shrift but one down!

Hello all, its been a mere two weeks since my last blog post, I think this counts as fulfilling my blog resolution to post more often!

Short Shrift

I've spent a tremendous amount of time in the pursuit of seeing Short-eared Owls this year. Shorties are my favourite birds without question and at this time of year I just can't help myself!
A few sightings have occurred in an area near me; an area that has held wintering birds in the past. I have visited the area probably a dozen times now - at dawn, at dusk, in the middle of the day, during rain, during wind, during sunshine and have precisely zero sightings to show for it. Yay.

The local Little Owls have been more obliging thankfully. I've recently been corresponding with fellow owl enthusiast Richard Pegler who also owls in the same area as I do and as a result we've both gained a couple of new sites to monitor. Cushty.

 

 

One Down

Because I've spent so much time owling recently, my quest to improve my county list had gone off the rails slightly. In January. Not a good start! In my defence I have been swotting up on my gull I.D theory; I must admit I was lacking in that particular area and thought I'd better release my inner larophile as a warm-up technique. I had intended to head over to Albert Village lake on Tuesday afternoon to have a look for some white-wingers but was sidetracked before I began by the Great Grey Shrike in the far east of the county..

Great Grey Shrike is a bit of an enigma for me - before today I had seen three in the UK; two at Harrington and the odd bird at Fakenham the other winter but never one in Leicestershire. So I was keen for this one to be the first county tick of the year, even though I'd forgotten to add it to the list of "most wanted" species in my last post. Oops.

Either way, off I went and got extremely lucky by all accounts. As I approached the spot where it had been reported from last, I saw a bird perched on a hedge about 50m away. And there it was. For just about long enough to rattle off a few record shots.

 

 

It disappeared almost immediately however so I departed down the road for a look to see if I could find it, didn't, and so returned to the place I'd seen it last. Three other birders including Steve Lister had appeared by now and had relocated the bird very distantly on the opposite side of the road to where I'd seen it. It quickly did another disappearing act so off I went, happy.

 

 

17 to go!



 



4th Jan: Fakenham, Cley, Holkham & Titchwell

When Drunkbirder John Hague messaged me earlier this week asking whether anyone fancied joining himself and the Llama for a trip out to Norfolk on Wednesday I jumped at the chance: I dont often get out with actual proper birdwatchers so this was an ideal opportunity to sponge some knowledge and besides, I quite fancied a trip out to the seaside!
So off we embarked from the Llamas stable bright and early at 6am, picking up the first bird of the day, a Barn Owl as it flew over the road. After a refuelling stop at the world renowned Kings Lynn Mcdonalds we soon got to the first port of call - the Fakenham Great Grey Shrike. Found the site well enough although admittedly I wasn't very confident about finding the bird itself - my only other experience with GGS was the Harrington bird(s) late last year that gave me the runaround and that fact combined with the total lack of sightings on Tuesday made it all the more surprising when the Shrike flew in and landed above me and Andy about 10 minutes after arrival. It didnt stay on this elected perch for long and quickly relocated to a hedgrow about 50 yards away that ran perpendicular to the path. This wasn't all bad however as there it stayed and allowed closer scrutiny of the features that have been pointing towards the homeyeri race:

As im generally uneducated in such matters im not going to say anything else about this bird except that at this stage it appears to be some form of integrade between homeyeri and excubitor but im just happy enough to call it my 2nd ever GGS!

And so we moved onto the next port of call - Cley. I'd never actually visited Cley before (unless you count standing on the shingle bank with my 6th form Geography class measuring pebbles) so I was keen to visit just for that reason but the main draw was the Western Sandpiper that would have been a lifer for me and Andy. It wasn't to be however. As it turns out we had just missed the bird on one of the scrapes and when we arrived the Dunlin flock was romping around the Cricket marsh and being generally uncooperative and invisible for the most part. We might (and I stress, MIGHT) have had the bird in flight on a couple of occasions when the wader flock was put up by a Marsh Harrier or Peregrine but there was no chance of me ticking it on that basis. After 60 mins or so of freezing our nadgers off (very windy, cold and exposed) we retreated to the visitors centre with only a flyby Water Pipit to show for our efforts. A cup of tea for the oldies and a council of war was in order but I certainly did NOT menace any old persons! They menaced me with questions such as, "what are all those birds flying around?" and, "you're from Leicester!!? Oooooo, Harold did you hear that? This young man is from Leicester! We used to live in Nottingham, what are the chances!!?"

In the end we decided to stuff the Western and head back down the coast in favour of having a decent days worth of birds rather than waiting all day trying to see an uninspiring peep.

And so we headed to Holkham where 4 Shore Larks did the decent thing and sneaked their way onto my life list (very nice), a large flock of 80ish Snow Buntings were sort of worth the walk (or rather the walk back) and a flock of Linnet tried their very best to string themselves into Twite. A couple of Rock Pipit were knocking around too and a quick seawatch (the tide was way out) produced 3 Red Breasted Mergansers on the sea and a Sanderling on the beach.

The final destination of the day was Titchwell and en-route we had a Short eared Owl hunting by the road which fulfilled my owl quota for the day but we didnt bother stopping and looking for the Rough legged Buzzard as the strong winds were keeping most raptors grounded. Arriving at Titchwell I was pleased to immediately see a crowd of observers gathered by the feeding station - a good indication that the Coues Arctic Redpoll was present! Indeed it was (lifer!) and due to the helpful directions from one of the observers I also managed to see my first Mealy Redpoll too!
There wasn't much else to see on the reserve however, the best of it being a few Spotted Redshank on the saltmarsh and single Med Gull and Yellow legged Gull that Andy "Guller" Mackay picked out of the roost. We stayed and froze half to death waiting for a Hen Harrier to come into roost but that wasn't to be.

Still, a cracking day out, topped off with 3 lifers!

3rd time's a charm!

Taking full advantage of having a working automobile again I made my way over to Harrington Airfield at first light this morning hoping to strike third time lucky and finally see the Great Grey Shrike that seems to have chosen Harrington as its overwintering destination - I do hope it stays for the duration! Anyway, arriving on site just after 7.45am I was pleased to find myself being the only person present (because it is likely to be the first visitors of the day who will accidently put up a SEO) and wasted no time in walking the path through the scrub towards the first set of bunkers. I'd just reached the first set of bunkers when I picked up a bird flying straight towards me at a lowish height from the North. Looked a bit like a magpie in flight. Only smaller. Thats the boy! It did the decent thing and dropped onto a perch not too far away either - perfect for a bit of gratuitous scoping!
It stayed in this area for the best part of half an hour and even allowed me to move a tad nearer so I could take some crappy record shots as it flitted from perch to perch. What a cracking bird!

After feasting my eyes on the bird for a good while I was cocking about on my phone sending a couple of emails and whatnot and looked up and realised it had gone! Bugger! Another birder turned up shortly afterwards who had seen it flying southwards from the area that I had seen it in towards a very distant wood. I called time at that point as it seemed reasonable to suggest the bird wouldn't be returning for a good while and went and spent a couple of hours at Blueberry farm in the hope of shorties again. No shorties but loads of migrant thrushes along with single Merlin and Treecreeper.

On the way home Stanford reservoir produced this nice Grey Wagtail along the inflow channel too. The below image is phone-binned, my first attempt at that in ages!

So a productive morning out birding.....no owls unfortunately, that might change later though!