A Week in Sometimes Wet and Windy Norfolk - Holkham NNR

We made a few visits to Holkam during the week, 2 full dayers and a pop in on the way back from elsewhere at dusk. There are a few great reasons to visit Holkham apart from the exorbitant parking fees! Firstly there are two great hides for viewing the Pink Foots coming in, in the evening, Secondly a wider variety of birds are to be seen and the Marsh Harriers (17 one night going down to roost in front of us.) are an absolute treat and thirdly great walks especially when you are rewarded with "a drift" of Snow Buntings and "an exaltation" of Shore Larks. (sorry getting in to my collective nouns!)

This was our first visit since the new visitor centre, called; "The Lookout" has opened, basically it's a Cafe! But at least it has good toilets, this was sadly lacking before, but does account for the hoick in the car parking costs. The lookout does provide chained down binoculars for looking out over the lifeless new pool/scrape that they have created, however the windows have huge thick vertical beams on the outside spaced about 50cm apart, so if you did see anything worth looking at, you can't track it, too much wood in the way. Bonkers!

Anyway so on to our visits, the first was to spend the day in the two hides, with a bit of a walk. Again the weather wasn't too bad, so some good views were had,
Sparrowhawk,

 Egyptian "Tree" Geese,

 Grey Heron,

 Kestrel; having a snack,

 Marsh Harrier and

 Greylags and a Galloway!

The Greylag flocks also contained a number of White-fronted Geese, but not in the above photo.

The geese didn't show too well that night.

The next full day took us along the beach back towards Wells to find the Shore Larks, at first there was no sign, but then the aforementioned drift of Snow Buntings turned up:

But no Shore Larks, however with a little bit of patience a group of six arrived. Now the area they like is now roped off, to protect them no doubt from over zealous photographers, this I understand, as much as I love taking photos and hoping to get that perfect shot, I would rather just watch the birds than disturb them, however tempting it is to get closer. So a rather poor photo of one I'm afraid:

Other birds seen where a Great White Egret in addition to the usual suspects:
Little Grebe,

 the Great White Egret,

 Marsh Harriet at sunset.

and Red Kite.

Talking of sunsets, we have been visiting Holkham for about 10 years now and one of my favourite views was a distant copse of trees at sunset as the sun goes down behind it, indeed in our dining room I have a blown up photo of it:

we were deeply saddened to see that the tree fellers were in! (I'm sure there's a joke there somewhere) but this is it last week:

I'm sure by now the last three trees have gone, just seems senseless to me.

So finally we had some great Geese moments, much to dark to photograph, but we did get some video, which I will post when I've finished these posts.

I forgot to mention we also had a Bittern drop into the reeds in front of the Washington Hide on one occasion, brilliant! (not fast enough with the camera though.) Also only our second Rough-legged Buzzard in the UK, the first was 4 years ago at Holkham.

Here's our Holkham list:

Bittern  ("Botaurus stellaris")

Blackbird  ("Turdus merula")

Black-headed Gull  ("Chroicocephalus ridibundus")

Blue Tit  ("Cyanistes caeruleus")

Brent Goose  ("Branta bernicla")

Buzzard  ("Buteo buteo")

Carrion Crow  ("Corvus corone")

Cormorant  ("Phalacrocorax carbo")

Curlew  ("Numenius arquata")

Egyptian Goose  ("Alopochen aegyptiaca")

Great Tit  ("Parus major")

Great White Egret  ("Ardea alba")

Grey Heron  ("Ardea cinerea")

Greylag Goose  ("Anser anser")

Hen Harrier  ("Circus cyaneus")

Herring Gull  ("Larus argentatus")

Jay  ("Garrulus glandarius")

Kestrel  ("Falco tinnunculus")

Lapwing  ("Vanellus vanellus")

Lesser Black-backed Gull  ("Larus fuscus")

Little Egret  ("Egretta garzetta")

Little Grebe  ("Tachybaptus ruficollis")

Long-tailed Tit  ("Aegithalos caudatus")

Magpie  ("Pica pica")

Mallard  ("Anas platyrhynchos")

Marsh Harrier  ("Circus aeruginosus")

Mute Swan  ("Cygnus olor")

Pheasant  ("Phasianus colchicus")

Pink-footed Goose  ("Anser brachyrhynchus")

Red Kite  ("Milvus milvus")

Red-legged Partridge  ("Alectoris rufa")

Robin  ("Erithacus rubecula")

Rough-legged Buzzard  ("Buteo lagopus")

Shelduck  ("Tadorna tadorna")

Shore Lark  ("Eremophila alpestris")

Snow Bunting  ("Plectrophenax nivalis")

Sparrowhawk  ("Accipiter nisus")

Starling  ("Sturnus vulgaris")

Teal  ("Anas crecca")

Tufted Duck  ("Aythya fuligula")

Water Rail  ("Rallus aquaticus")

White-fronted Goose  ("Anser albifrons")

Wigeon  ("Anas penelope")

Woodpigeon  ("Columba palumbus")

Wren  ("Troglodytes troglodytes")