Wednesday 30 November 2016

Norfolk Day 1 - RSPB Titchwell & Holkham

We have just returned from a wonderful week in Norfolk, despite two or three days of  bad weather. I will start with our first day, when we had the best weather of the week, with glorious sunshine, but shall we say the wind made it a tad on the cool side (actually read that as bl**dy freezing!)

We were down there as usual with Jo and Jimmy, but were joined for the first two days by our great friends Tim and Wendy. As they hadn't done a birding trip to Norfolk before we elected to start with RSPB Titchwell and then head down to Holkham for the Pink-footed Geese arriving at dusk.

Titchwell was brilliant as usual with plenty of waterfowl and waders. We started by heading down to the screen in case there was anything of note on the pool, on previous visits we have seen Waxwing and Red-crested Pochard down there and with this being a Waxwing year we had our fingers crossed, however nobody had told the Waxwings we were coming! Never mind.

We did find some Red-legged Partridge down in the field, though proving to be a bit camera shy.
The pool was pretty much empty apart from Mallard and Coot, so we went back and walked to the main part of the reserve, stopping at the first hide, walking on to the shore and then back to the main hides and here are a few shots of some of what we saw on the way:
Marsh Harrier
 Greylags
 Teal, Wigeon, Lawpings.....
 Little Egret
 Teal
 Ringed Plover
 Dunlin

 Black-tailed Godwit
 Little Grebe
Redshank
 Common Gull
 Sanderling
 Shoveler
 Snipe
 Whooper Swans
Bar-tailed Godwit
Plus much more of course, we left Titchwell about 2.30pm to drive down to Holkham and get set up in the hide for the Pink-footedGeese coming in. There were plenty of Wigeon, Lapwing and Geese already there:
The Geese did come in, but not in the numbers that we have seen in the past, can't win them all!

More to follow!


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