PALLID SWIFT in 'The Square' Cley!!!

PALLID SWIFT

Over the Eye Field at Cley NWT

Wells Woods

When I arrived to search for goodies here, I found several well known faces including James Mc. (always a good sign you are in the right place), M.A.G., R.M., Richard from Titchwell RSPB and a few others. My search with others was not as exciting as I had hoped for and in any case was cut short by a message on the pager which read "Probable Pallid Swift, Cley NWT over Daukes Hide at 11.36am". A 'swift' march back to the car ensued, also gave Mark a lift and whizzed up the road in a puff of smoke!

Cley NWT

Slung the car at the bottom of Old Woman's Lane and viewed the 'probable' Pallid Swift within a few minutes with a few others at 12.20pm. My camera lens really needs to go in the bin big time – sooooo frustrating not to be able to do what I normally do with birds in flight and set the camera to shutter priority (TV) and to 1/2000 – lens jammed on me several times and lost important shots! Still managed to get a few out of focus shots though. The bird was extremely mobile and is covering big distances. It flew over our heads, high and went west.

PALLID SWIFT

Flying west over Old Woman's Lane, Cley

We all flew up to Beach Road where we all viewed the swift over the Eye Field. Then re-located to Coastguards where Steve G. and I walked along the path towards North Hide in an attempt to get closer to the bird for pictures. My camera played up again, but this was where I got the best two shots, well I say best two, they are all rubbish, but best I could get under the circumstances. Steve got a better picture than me and another visiting birder who was here on holiday got the best shot, well that I could see anyway. Several people now seemed to think it was a Pallid Swift going by views through scopes, pictures etc. I spent a long time trying to get pictures, but the bird never came close and in the end was lost to view way over the East Bank. The Pallid Swift was also seen at Salthouse at 1.30pm. No more sightings of the swift for several hours.

PALLID SWIFT

Over the Eye Field at Cley NWT

Went to the V.C. for a cheese scone to celebrate. Timed this just right as it started to rain very heavily! I am not one to give up and I wanted to see this bird again. I decided that Muckleburgh Hill at Weybourne would be a good place to search for this bird – the views from the top are pretty awesome and with tons of sky on view here, it seemed a good place to start the search. Mark G. decided to join me, so off we went to find the Pallid Swift again!

Muckleburgh Hill, Weybourne

The sun was now fully out and Muckleburgh Hill looked potentially exciting to find something rare in, but apart from a party of Long-tailed Tits along with a Great Tit, a Green Woodpecker, Wood Pigeons and tons of Rooks, nothing else much was seen! We scanned the skies for ages and was just about to give up, when Mark spotted the Pallid Swift at 5.04pm east of Muckleburgh Hill over the air field, in brilliant sunshine, but again distantly. I didn't get any pictures of the bird here as it was distant and moved out of view inland quickly. We raced back to the car and drove along the main road to where the 'tank' is at the entrance to the Muckleburgh Collection and bumped into a birder who had seen it here, almost above him. James Mc., Julian B., turned up and a few others. Went to the beach and scanned the skies there and then to gain some ground, searched in Weybourne village and also around the church to see if it had roosted there, but no more sightings sadly. Mark said it would be roosting somewhere here tonight, so there was a chance of seeing it in the morning.

When I got home, something really freaky happened. I picked up a North American bird book to look at the Cape May Warbler that has turned up today in Shetland and found that I had opened the book up onto the page with the bird on!!!

Looking forward to another day's birding tomorrow!