A Week in Sometimes Wet and Windy Norfolk - RSPB Snettisham

We spent a week in Norfolk staying in Wells-Next-the-Sea, it's a great location for getting easily to all our favourite birding sites, although the accommodation left a bit to be desired.

Day 1 a Sunday took us to the RSPB reserve at Snettisham for the day, it was much brighter day than we expected with a surprise thrown in too. Having said that the tides were really against us! I think you could have almost walked all the way to Holland it was that far out, subsequently the waders were a long way away apart from a few just in front of the first hide:

A Ponderance of Golden Plovers, was a short way off, but too far for a deceit photo. (A Ponderance by the way is one of a few collective nouns for any type of Plover, along with "Deceit", "Brace", "Congregation" and "Wing".)

On the other side of the hide overlooking the lagoons there were plenty of Canada and Greylag Geese, Wigeon, Cormorant, Lapwings and Teal.

We took a walk clockwise from there around the lagoon to the temporary hide come screen. So that we could get a better view of four Whooper Swans that were nestled down on one of the scrapes:

A Little Egret presented itself well before flying off:

I remember not that long ago when we used to get very excited about seeing an Egret, they seem to turn up in numbers most everywhere now, still great to see though, especially when they are fishing.
After a bit of a chat with some locals we moved on to the next hide, where despite the sunshine these Wigeon ere keeping themselves tucked up.

 Also the Whoopers decide to come out and do some "Whooping" We have this on film, Tina did a great job, when I have edited it I will post it on the blog.

 Despite the sun you could tell there was some rain about.

There were also a few Goldeneye about, but proved very difficult to get a photo, they wouldn't come near the hides.

 Cormorant flying past!

We the had a surprise, there were what appeared to be three Little Egrets on the far side of the lagoon, when I noticed that Egret number three was in fact a Spoonbill!

We returned to the first hide and waited for dusk to watch the Pink-footed Geese come in, unfortunately by this time it had also started raining, but it was still a great sight.