SANDHILL CRANE ON NORFOLK LIST!!!

On the Norfolk list, but not mine! Could not believe it when I got home from work to see texts from friends that the Sandhill Crane had been seen in Norfolk at Snettisham Coastal Park at 1pm on Saturday and picture of it on the net!!!!!!!!! I immediately turned the computer on to find that Paul Eele, Warden at Titchwell RSPB had posted the following on Birdforum: (click here to see photo of the bird at Snettisham)

"Unfortunately the sandhill crane was seen in Norfolk!
A couple have been into the Snettisham office with a photo of a bird they couldn't ID but did know it was kind of crane. The bird was on the mud off the Coastal Park at ca 13:00. There were quite a few people who had arrived late for the high-tide spectacular but no-one knew what the bird was. I don't know how long the bird was present or which direction it flew off in.

Hopefully it will do the same as the WTE and head back north soon"

My reply to Paul's post: "Great that its now on the Norfolk list. BUT..... I suppose it was always going to drop into/pass through Norfolk somewhere, but it would have been great to have been found by birders who knew what they were looking at (don't mean this rudely, just stating a fact!). If someone who is not an experienced birder saw a bird they didn't know and as large as that would have looked, standing on the mud flats at Snettisham, you would have thought they would have rung somewhere like Titchwell RSPB to say so at the time!!!! Even people that don't have tel numbers of pagers/hotlines have heard of Titchwell RSPB and most people have a mobile phone with internet on nowadays to find the tel number for Titchwell and considering they were "quite a few people" there..... Very sad that no one else got the chance to see this in Norfolk, but hey ho! You never know, it might come back!!!"

SANDHILL CRANE - 4th for UK
1st one on Fair Isle in 1981.
2nd on Exnaboe, Shetland in 1991
3rd on Orkney in 2009

A quick summary of the SANDHILL CRANE'S Route etc:
Lothian - 16th September
Aberdeen - 22nd September
Northumberland - 29th September
County Durham - 29th September
Cleveland - 29th September
Yorkshire - 29th September
Lincolnshire - 1st October 12pm but not known about until 8.10pm! (I am sure if people had known this - there would have been many more birders lined up along the Norfolk coast in anticipation!!!
Snettisham - Coastal Park 1pm, 1st October seen by non-birders and reported Monday morning 3rd October.
North Warren RSPB - 11.43am, 2nd October
Boyton - 1pm til dusk, 2nd October
Boyton - 7.05am until 5.33pm, 3rd October
Boyton - 4th-7th October - flew off high south from Boyton at 10.35am on Friday 7th and not relocated.