Norfolk Barn Owls

One of the most notable things whilst driving around the Norfolk lanes was the number of Barn Owls we saw. Only on one day did we fail to see one of these charismatic creatures hunting or sat atop hedges and fence posts, and on two notable occasions, flying alongside the car for some considerable distance.
This particular bird was one of two out hunting at 11 in the morning within a few hundred yards of eachother. We seemed to see them at all times of day, and even in some particularly unpleasant weather conditions, although this morning was just grey and misty (and cold!).

Although we had some very close encounters with Barn Owls during the week, this was the only one I had the opportunity to really stop and photograph although he/she was about 50 metres away or so. After a few minutes of studiously ignoring me, it suddenly seemed disturbed by the shutter noise and its ghostly form disappeared off to hunt in the mist.

Our maximum count on any one day was 4 different birds, but even had we seen 40, I don't think the magic of watching them floating over the fields would have been in any anyway diminished.

Norfolk part 4

I was looking through the tourist bumf at the barn and noticed in the Pensthorpe leaflet that it mentioned Willow Tits as a notable species there. Pensthorpe is where they filmed Springwatch so I thought it seemed like a good place to go, and interesting regarding their captive breeding programs.
Pensthorpe has a wierd and wonderful wildfowl collection which we spent a little time admiring, but I concentrated on the birds that turn up either on migration or as rare vagrants in Britain. I was disappointed to find out on arrival that their advertised Willow Tits were in fact Marsh Tits, an error which almost made me not pay the admission fee! However, we were there so ..

 

A Red crested Pochard with a normal Pochard in front of it

Now accepted onto the British list, the Hooded Merganser. These drakes were continually displaying. Surely the cartoon characters of the duck world.

The two females look notably unimpressed by proceedings

The bill is unmistakedly that of a sawbill.

A very handsome drake Smew

Goldeneye, of which we saw many wild examples during the week, but not this close!

and of course the inevitable pair of Egyptian Geese. These weren't part of the collection, and neither were the Mallards!

The furthest hide looks over a large scrape and we spent most of our time there looking through the flocks of "proper" wild birds. Everything was a bit distant for photograghs, but for the record, species seen in no particular order: Common Buzzard, Sparrowhawk, Barnacle Goose, Canada Goose, Egyptian Goose, Greylag Goose, Pintail, Shoveller, Coot, Moorhen, Gadwall, Teal, Wigeon, Avocet, Tufted Duck, Redshank, Lapwing, Great Tit, Blue Tit, Marsh Tit, Greenfinch, Chaffinch, Great Spotted Woodpecker, Dunnock and Robin. 

On arrival back at the Garden Barn, there were 12 Pied Wagtails lined up along the roof, all equally spaced as though someone had stuck them there while we were away. Very odd.

Wood Duck

Sunday was such a gloriously cloudless day (although chilly), it would have been criminal to spend it indoors, so I chose to have a look over Eyeworth pond following a report of a drake Wood Duck. This showy duck really belongs in N.America, and its popularity in wildfowl collections suggest it is very much more likely to be an escapee than a vagrant. Still, its a handsome chap...

 

  

 

In tow, he had a female Mandarin who seemed quite impressed, interestingly, remarkably similar to the female Wood Duck.

  

A drake Mandarin seemed most put out by this activity and followed them across the pond, only to be chased off by the determined Wood Duck. Reading about it, there seem no records of any Wood Duck/Mandarin crosses, in fact Mandarins don't seem to interbreed with any other species in the wild. Wood Duck hybrids on the other hand do turn up from time to time. Apparently even if these two did mate, the eggs are almost bound to be infertile due to some chromosomal incompatibility.

In this show of foreign colour I thought I'd better redress the balance with a bit of true Brit colour..

There is of course fabulous colour to be found around in any garden, or in this case carpark. I just liked this shot on a rare day of sunshine this winter (or is it spring? - Depends who you ask) 

A walk along the ridge overlooking Black Gutter Bottom was thoroughly uproductive apart from 4 bolting Roe Deer. Small birds of any species were  hard to come by, even in the woods at the far end of the valley. For the record, noted species were Buzzard (2), Song Thrush (1) Mistle Thrush (4) Robin, Chaffinch, Blue Tit, Long Tailed Tit, Black-headed Gull, Rook, Crow and Magpie.

Raining sun and hare

I thought the Norfolk Brown Hares deserved a post to themselves. I have been delighted by these animals ever since my first job as a tractor driver on a small dairy farm where the manager allowed no shooting, except for one man with a rifle who used to cull the mixy rabbits once a fortnight.
Presumably as a result, we had a huge Hare population which were just great to watch sorting out partnerships in the early in the spring. I found late February the best time to see them chasing, gamboling and boxing rather than the more traditional mad March, with sometimes up to 10 in a field at the same time.
I guess the weather hasn't been condusive to this sort of behaviour yet this year, and the Norfolk Hares contented themselves with lying down or running away.
Back on the farm all those years ago, early cuts of grass for silage called for total concentration when mowing to look for bolting Hares in front of the mower and instantly stop because this was usually a Female with leverets which she would leave in the "form". On with gloves, and all the leverets would get moved behind the mower, I don't know how many I moved in the two springs there, but it must have approached 100.

 

Anyone got a Hare dryer?

 I learnt during my time with Hares that if you go very slowly, you can crawl up on Hares and get quite close, as long as you approach them side on. They have 360 degree vision with their eyes positioned on the side of their head as they are, but just a very narrow field of binocular vision in front and behind to judge distance. This one judged my distance as a bit too close!

 

Hare today gone ....today

Hare spray

 

Hare lyin'

  

Hare breaks

 

 Hare in the air

Sun and Hare

Norfolk part 3

Tuesday's weather forecast was quite good, probably the best of the week, so two winter Norfolk speciality species were on our quarry list for the day. The first being Rough legged Buzzard, and there had been reports of two over Chedgrave Marsh, an area I was not familiar with at all. No matter, we had what seemed like good directions on the report. We got a little lost despite the satnav, and ended up stopping to buy a map to check the grid reference. Close inspection of the map made the directions of where to park and where to walk seem a little less intelligible so we parked in the forest carpark to walk through the trees to the marsh. Within a few minutes of starting out we caught a brief glimpse of a stoat and seemed to be surrounded by Goldcrests all the while. On reaching the flat meadows that fronted the marsh the "view from the mound" instruction seemed to make no sense whatsoever. The only raised ground was the bank that ran along the watercourse for miles, so we walked over the meadows to the bank which revealed 100s of acres of reedbeds.

 

  

  

Although trying to find anything in these huge reedbeds and even huger skies seemed a little daunting, the single Marsh Harrier we had seen early on helped buoy up my optimism, but my enthusiasm was not apparently infectious. Distance is very difficult to judge in this landscape, and reaching the nearest windmill took rather longer than I had anticipated. The wind didn't help, the waving reeds meant it was less likely to pick up Bearded Tit on the way, however, spirits were raised by a Chinese Water Deer bolting along the path for a little way before leaping back into the reedbed. I'd not seen one before and I was irrationally pleased. 

After a while we spotted a couple of Marsh Harriers in the distance, and then, all of a sudden a higher circling raptor proved to be one of the Rough Legged Buzzards we were after, its white tail with a black trailing edge showing well in the sunshine. If you have never seen one, here it is.....

 

...yes it was a long way off, but easily identified through the scope and we watched it for quite a while surprised by quite how much time it spent hovering. There was quite a lot of Harrier activity in the same sort of vicinity which was actually the adjacent Langley marsh  below Burgh Castle. On the damp meadows between us and them were another pair of Egyptian Geese, a few Shellduck, a Mute Swan and a Little Egret. We didn't get the chance to explore this area further as after lunch we were off to Hickling Broad to try our hand at catching up with Cranes coming into roost.

Interestingly, on our way to the raptor watching point, there was very little wildfowl around at all, the two hides providing only Coot, and the screen onto the main broad adding a few Tufted Duck and a Great Crested Grebe into the mix. From the raptor point (which is an excellent raised hide with 360 degree viewing) we did in the end get two views of distant Crane flying past, I don't know where they were roosting, but it wasn't here. The trip was worth it though, well if Marsh Harriers are your thing, as in the early evening gloom we saw a total of 9 floating over and dropping into the reedbeds for a well deserved sleep. They were still coming in when we left, but the light was making them very hard to pick up.

 

  

  

  

In front of the hide a Great Crested Grebe kept displaying although I never saw what to, maybe it was just rehearsing on its own.

Just as we approached the carpark, two Blackbirds came chasing through, alarm calling furiously. For an  instant I assumed a territorial dispute until I saw the pursuing Sparrowhawk. I wondered if the second Blackbird was chasing the first in the hope of turning off quickly and diverting the Sparrowhawks attention to the one in front. Quite a good tactic if thats what it was.

Norfolk part 2

Cley marshes are quite extensive and exposed, and exposure was something I was quite keen to keep to camera settings given the equally keen wind which was determined not to keep the 2 or 3C temperatures to itself.  I'm not a great hide lover, I've always thought it cheating in some way, but I was quite looking forward to some shelter for a while. This Grey Heron on the way to the first hide looked equally chilled by the biting breeze. I say breeze because I had forgotten quite what wind was like over this landscape... until later on in the week... which caused me to reappraise previous conditions.

 

I couldn't help but feel a little bit envious of the shelter afforded by the reedbeds before getting in to the relatively tropical conditions of the hide where the undoubted stars of the show were Avocet. I scanned several times through all the Black-headed Gulls looking for a first Norfolk Mediterranean Gull for me and failed. 

 

Mind you, I even missed the rather blurry Common Gull in the shot above of Avocet in flight which is pretty poor form really, but so did the other two birders in the hide so maybe I'm being hard on myself. No, I'm not, they are obvious in retrospect. 

I know there are technical problems with the shot below of Avocets (as there are with most of my photos), but I like it, they remind me of something out of Star Wars so I'm putting it in.

  The next one was really taken to show the variation of winter, eclipse and full summer plumage of Black-headed Gulls. Usually Mediterranean Gulls achieve the summer plumage before BH Gulls, so of course I concentrated on anything approaching a black head. Again I completely missed the 2 Common Gull in the foreground, one lay down and one to the left of it.

 Even more annoying, I didn't register this Med Gull flying passed at all until scanning through the photos at home. Dear me. Note the total lack of black on the primary feathers (ignoring my earlier note, this one is still in complete winter plumage). In my defence, I'm sure it didn't land and I was probably too busy with the camera rather than binoculars. No one else noticed it either. We are all bad.

 Maybe even worse, this blurry fly past looks scarily like a Little Gull. I don't think it is, but I wouldn't be shocked if a Gull expert said it was. 

  

The following few pictures belong completely to Avocets. There was a time when I thought I would never see one, and even now there are hundreds in Poole Harbour over the winter, I still feel privileged to glance upon their dainty forms.

 
 

Last but not least, my favourite one..

I almost forgot. Shortly after we arrived I saw a Snow Goose coming in to land out of sight on the adjacent scrape. I hadn't seen it leave, so I had high hopes of spotting it when we moved to the other hides which overlooked it. So, back into the biting wind...
On opening up the other hide shutters, it was apparent why they weren't really frequented. The wind blew in full face and seemed even worse than standing outside. We didn't stay that long, the Snow Goose was long gone or tucked up in shelter somewhere, but I did get some closer shots of the more common inhabitants.

 

Avocets finding tiny molluscs

Teal having a bath

A very proud looking drake Widgeon...

and his Mrs

On the walk back, the fed up looking Heron had moved slightly, which was a relief as I thought it might have been frozen, but it looked no more happy. I briefly wanted to give it a hug, but was instantly reminded of the one occasion I have been within inches of a Heron's beak and banished the thought from my mind.

Rather more surprising was this Black Swan which I assume hadn't flown here from Australia, nomadic though they may be...

 

Other species seen were Lapwing, Herring Gull, Redwing, Marsh Harrier (3), Kestrel, Great crested Grebe, Collared dove, huge flights of Brent Geese, Redshank, Common Sandpiper, Lapwing, Shoveller, Shellduck and what became a daily sighting of Egyptian Geese..

On a mission, we headed out to Horsey mere in the hope of Cranes, but they had other ideas and hid their considerable frames with spectacular success.  We did however see 4 or 5 Marsh Harriers, Great crested Grebe, Wigeon, Teal and Tufted Duck. On the way back we found our daily Barn Owl and stopped to watch it for a few minutes despite the gloom and light drizzle.

Despite the lack of light, I decided to take a few of photos one of which I think summed up everything about the place, the weather and the time of day. Its not a great picture of a Barn Owl but it is a good picture of the moment and the colours, you will have to trust me on this. Anyone who has spent anytime in Norfolk in the winter will know what I mean. (I have, I spent a season working for a farming company during the record low temperatures of '81-82 which reached -26C!)

This particular owl was one of two during the week which decided to fly alongside the car for at least half a mile causing me concern regarding potential road traffic accidents, but also affording fantastic close views which will live with me for an awfully pleasing long time. It also gave me the chance to find out that they seem to be able to fly fairly comfortably at 35 mph although that is fairly academic compared to the magic of the moment.