Roger needed Siberian
Stonechat for his British List and with a rather superb looking male, judging
by the photos, we set off for Caister-on-Sea.
We picked Malcolm up in Market Harbour and then headed east on the A6. As we were approaching Norwich on the A11 we
received a tweet confirming that the bird was still present and when we arrived
some birders were leaving having seen the bird.
We walked the short distance from the car park to view the area of gorse
alongside the golf course the bird was frequenting. However after a good thirty minutes all we
had seen was a couple of Stonechats and with the wind increasing and rain
expected we began to get a little concerned.
Quite a crowd was beginning to build and most people present still hadn’t
seen it but we soon became aware that a group nearer the car park were clearly
watching something and a quick scan of the gorse produced the bird. It was clearly much paler than the Stonechats
we had seen earlier and as the photos suggested was a rather stunning male and
much better than my three previous immature birds that I had seen on the Isles
of Scilly. Surprisingly, as it had been
so illusive, it provided some nice views over the next thirty minutes or so,
even if a little distant and I did manage to get a few record shots. It eventually disappeared again and so we
went back to the car and decided to head for Strumpshaw Fen as a Great Grey
Shrike had been reported as showing well.
Siberian Stonechat
It took us just over thirty
minutes to get the car park at Strumpshaw Fen and after checking the location
of Fen Hide in the centre we quickly walked around to the hide. When we arrived at the hide it was rather
packed but fortunately a number of birders departed just as we arrived and we
were able to access the hide. Two
birders leaving had also given us directions to where the shrike was being
seen. We soon picked it up but it was
quite some distance away and not what I would call showing well but perhaps it
was closer earlier today. We retraced
our steps back to the car park and found a Siskin amongst a party of Goldfinch
and two Redwing flew over and we also saw several Jays whilst we were on site.
Whilst having lunch we
discussed what our options were and finally decided to go to Holme Fen in
Cambridgeshire to finish the day. On
route we had quite a bit of rain and after an inordinate amount of waiting time
at a level crossing the rain came again as we arrived at the fen. However we were quite fortunate to experience
a dry period for about thirty minutes when we saw a nice male Hen Harrier and a
Short-eared Owl.
We hadn’t seen a tremendous
number of species today but we had definitely seen some quality birds and Roger
had added a lifer to his UK list.
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