East Hills – Wells
I have been extremely busy trying to get things sorted at my parent's house this week, before I return to work on Monday. All valuables and important stuff are now distributed between my sisters and I – this just leaves boot sale type items and big stuff to sell if possible. Because of this, I have not had the time to go birding, but today I needed to escape. It was a beautiful sunny day and there were lots of people out in the glorious weather. I have had a very, very strange day indeed! Very sadly I found no rare birds on today's east winds, but did find something I hadn't bargained for!!!
I started the day at Holkham and parked up at Lady Ann's Drive. I rarely park here, but wanted to go and have a nose at the new 'Look Out' Visitor Centre, which was opened on the 11th October by Andrew Sells, Chairman of Natural England and The 8th Earl of Leicester. What an amazing piece of architecture! This new centre is situated on the right of the north end of Lady Ann's Drive, just as you start to walk east along the path to Wells. The wooden modern circular designed building, is set on a mound and surrounded by newly planted marram grass in sand – hope it takes! If it does, it will look amazing. Once inside the building, there is no roof! Well there is a inner roof – imagine a roof with a large circle cut out of the centre! There are toilets, a cafe and presentation boards informing visitors about the wildlife and the reserve. The focus point is an arty farty sculpture of marram grass with water fountain in the centre of the inner area. There is also a very nice potential wader scrape south (inland side) of the visitor centre – they need to erect a hide there please! It was far more spectacular than I imagined, but then with all the ticket money they have collected over the years, the building could have been made of gold at least!!!
I left here and walked east along the path to find some Yellow-browed Warblers. It was so good to be out and the light was beautiful. I spent a good while going off the beaten track into glades scattered with rotton logs, in hope of a Red-flanked Bluetail or something equally good, but nothing of note was found. I peered into Holm Oaks and waited for colourful stripes to appear – again nothing. In fact the only birds I saw were a Blue Tit, Jay and a Wood Pigeon. I am ashamed to say that I must be the only birder who hasn't seen a single Yellow-browed Warbler yet this year! My time is running out! I returned to the new visitor centre.
Nice Dyson hand drier in the loos – took seconds to dry hands! A birdwatcher presumed I was staff and asked me where the sightings board was – good point! Now, there was a sightings board outside at the front of the building, but it was simply a general sightings board of birds in the area. A daily sightings board would obviously be a good idea and I'm sure that this will be considered in the future, I hope so anyway – I could be Assistant Warden and keep this board up-to-date if you are reading this Andrew?! The cafe was inviting and I went to assess their foods and drinks on offer. Although I was very impressed with their environmentally friendly ice-creams for sale, I was not impressed with being able to help yourself to an ice-cream with no wrapper on, with each ice-cream positioned only an inch from the next one – see picture! There were lots of healthy and non-healthy food items for sale, including fresh fruit, naughty cakes and healthy smoothies! I loved the setting of the cafe tables and chairs – it all looks very nice indeed.
My main trip today was out to East Hills. I have not been out here for a long time, in fact I can't remember the last time I birded here. Arriving on the 'hills' I immediately saw two Red Kites on the south side. Birds seen out here: Coal Tit, Robin, Hedgesparrow, Wren, Blackbirds, Song Thrush, Redwings, Chaffinches, Goldfinches, Goldcrests, Chiffchaffs, a Brambling calling, one Blackcap.
I scanned the far end of East Hills to see if there were any other birders out here and discovered a naked man sunbathing in the long grass next to the main sycamore glade!! You did read that correctly! I was very taken back by this and didn't really know what to do next. This affected my birding massively, as I felt I couldn't take my normal route, nor could I sit in my usual lunch spot. Understandably I felt very uneasy about the entire situation. I phoned a birding friend to ask if they knew who was out on East Hills to find out if I was alone or not – they didn't know. I was determined to carry on birding, but took a different route to the sycamore glade. I then discovered evidence of someone camping out here – there were a large number of items including sleeping mat and sleeping bag, clothes, a large rucksack, a woman's floral type bag, a metal saucepan partly full of cooked lentils, cadbury's hot chocolate, a box of eggs, toothpaste, toothbrush, three potatoes lying on the bare ground! Plastic food bags scattered around, tins, a drinks bottle, a pair of shoes and a candle positioned in the sand! The items in the 'camp' gave the impression of more than one person out here – if this was the case, where were the others? To add to this was a circle of razor shells that had been positioned in a perfect circle and in the centre some bird feathers had been positioned – all very odd indeed. Odd enough for me to ring Holkham Warden Andrew Bloomfield!!! Andrew was obviously not happy to hear that someone was camping out here and was contemplating on coming out here to speak to the man/others.
No one is allowed to camp out here for starters, never mind about nude sunbathing! This will obviously all sound very amusing to my readers, but the realisation that I was out here alone with a potentially dodgy situation, made me feel very uncomfortable to say the least. At this point, I didn't know if the nude man was still where I first saw him or where anyone else was. I found myself constantly checking all around me, when I should have been looking for birds. Andrew phoned me back a bit later and his exact words were "we're coming out to rescue you Penny". Whilst waiting for Andrew to come out to assess the situation, I spotted a young man (dressed thank goodness) walking across the open ground near the sycamore glade – he then sat down by a pile of ash, which was obviously where he had had a fire and sat down to eat something from a tin. He glanced across and was aware I was there, but continued to eat from his tin.
Andrew and his colleague Johnny came out by boat with the Wells Harbour Master and met up with me by the sycamore glade. Just before they arrived the young man had disappeared for a moment. I saw him disappear behind some pine trees close by but he hadn't gone far. It was almost as if he knew they were looking for him, as they found him laying down in the grass. I stood fairly close by and could hear some of the conversation. He was a 'Pagen' he said and had been sleeping out here for a couple of days. Andrew chatted to him very politely and asked if he was ok and where he came from, but pointed out the dangers of fires in dry conditions etc and explained that no one was allowed to camp out here or light fires and politely told him to move on asap and that if another fire was lit, the police would be involved. There was no one else out here with him. Andrew and Johnny then joined me and we walked off – when out of earshot, Andrew told me that he was completely spaced out on something and was not with it at all, so what he was under the influence of, goodness only knows! Whilst chatting to Andrew about birds and all kinds and sundry, Johnny had disappeared over a dune ridge. After Andrew had phoned the harbour master to ask if they could pick me up as well, he called out to Johnny. No reply. Andrew called several more times with no reply. He called Johnny's phone – no reply. I suddenly felt very paranoid and said to Andrew that I felt like we are in a thriller story right now – what had happened to Johnney?!!! Nothing as it happens, he appeared a short while later! Lets get out of here!!!
We walked back to the west end of East Hills and went back by boat with the Harbour Master to Wells Quay! I felt relieved to be off there I can tell you. That will be the last time I go out there alone! I am HUGELY grateful to Andrew and Johnny for coming out to rescue me, thank you both very much! Andrew was quite pleased, as it was his birthday and he had always wanted to spend his birthday on East Hills, so I had done him a favour apparently! We were dropped off at the Beach Road end of Wells and Andrew and Johnney very kindly gave me a lift back to my car.
I spent a while birding along Garden Drove to find some birds, but only found a tit flock with Chiffchaffs – although a birder called 'Richard' I bumped into, had just seen a Yellow-browed Warbler before I saw him! Richard had also been out on East Hills earlier and had also seen the young man, who was dressed when he saw him! Richard had watched him collecting bits of plastic off the beach into a pile on the inland side of East Hills. What a weird day! Good night!
More pictures to be added later
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