Seawatching and Blakeney Point!!!!

Icterine Warbler - Halfway House - Blakeney Point

HOT BIRDING!!!!!

Got up at a ridiculous time this morning - it was torrential rain and I had to use a brolly, just to take stuff out to the car!! Serious flooding around King's Lynn and on some of the roads on route.

Arrived Cley Coastguards at 6.45am - not much doing really - wind veering to south east when they said it was going to be NE - 8 whimbrel, Arctic Skua chasing a tern, several flocks of Common Scooter going west and also several Gannets by 7.20am. Got bored and left. Along the beach road a kestrel sat on a telegraph pole and a flock of starlings lined up on the telegraph wires.


Walsey Hills 7.50am until 9.30 several chiffchaffs, 2 linnets, 2 common whitethroats, great tits, coal tits and hedge sparrows.

Sawbury Hill which is opposite the Iron Road just east of Walsey Hills on right hand side, travelling towards Salthouse - found a Pied Flycatcher sitting in an elder at 9.40am!!!! Naturally I had left the camera in the car! Rushed back to get it and on my return there was no sign of it - typical!

Connor phoned me to say he was going down the Point (Blakeney Point) with his dad and would I like to join them - I was going anyway, but its always nice to go down with someone else, especially if you don't see anything good!

Went up the visitor centre briefly and then went to Daukes Hide for a short time - too many people in the hides - now I know why I prefer evenings!

Went to Cleyspy to look at different bits and pieces and then returned to Cley Beach Carpark to have my lunch and get bag ready for BP.

Started walking the Point at around 1.25pm. 2 Spoonbills flying west, a female Wheatear bounded across the shingle, several skylarks, meadows pipits and reed buntings. A good passage of whimbrel seen and heard throughout the afternoon. As we walked through the suada bushes, I was thinking - I am getting to old for this!!! 2.25pm Connor shouted out Wryneck as he almost stood on it!!! It was a few hundred yards before halfway house - it bounded further away and over a creek where it landed briefly on a sueda bush before disappearing in the undergrowth - no chance of a photo there! I flushed a fem. Common Redstart by Half way house (2.50pm) and shortly after this at 3pm we had an elusive Icterine Warbler which I got a couple of shots of. The Icterine Warbler also sat on the shingle under a Yellow horned poppy plant at one point!

Icterine Warbler - Half Way House - Blakeney Point

At the 'Tamerisk' near the Plantation we had 2 Willow Warblers and at The Plantation we had 2 Willow Warblers and 2 Pied Flycatchers - 4.25pm, although the Pied Flys did not wish to be photographed! Sat by the Lupins, but nothing here. Looking at the time, we decided not go any further, so turned back and decided the flat sand looked much more inviting than the shingle! Watched a dark phase Arctic Skua chasing a tern at 5.50pm. Crossed over to just after Half way House again to try and relocate the Wryneck, but no luck. Several people were standing near the house looking at/for the Icterine.

The walk back to Coastguards seemed like forever, which it always does, but Connor and his dad did an excellent job of saying regularly 'we are nearly there'!!!

Connor and his dad left the carpark. I sat in my deckchair drinking coffee and enjoying a buttered cheese scone that I had bought earlier at the Cley Visitor Centre! It was soooo lovely to sit down. A lady called across from the other side of the carpark to say she had a Whinchat in her scope - looked lovely in the sunshine, sitting on a fence post, although not close enough to photograph - think it was the same one that Eddie M. had found earlier.

Left here and returned to Sawbury Hill, but no sign of Pied Fly there. Huge flock of greylags and egyptian geese in the stubble field adjacent.

Walsey Hills - nothing here apart from a very strange Hoopoe calling.. hmmmmmmm...... someone messing about I thought... it was indeed, John Furse!!!!!!! We walked along bottom path and got very excited over what turned out to be a woodpigeon!

Was extremely tired driving home and arrived back at 9.15pm - really don't want to go to work in the morning!