THE CLEY BIRD CLUB, BIG BIRD DAY RACE – "HOT BIRDERS" TEAM!

Arnold's Marsh from The East Bank, Cley NWT

 

https://pennyshotbirdingandlife.blogspot.com/2020/01/big-bird-day-count-saturday-11th.html

I had originally planned a team of four, but P.S and A.J. were working today, so that left Eddie M. and myself. I don't quite know how I managed to get to Cley before sunrise after working six straight days, but I did!

Met up with Eddie at Coastguards, Cley and spent the day racing round, seeing as many different species as possible before 5pm. It was a very windy day, which affected birding massively for all the teams and resulted in a lot of species not being seen, as most sensible birds would have been hunkered down and as Eddie put it, they would have been 'sitting lower than a snake's belly'!!! We covered Cley, Walsey Hills, Salthouse, Glandford, Bayfield Lake, Wiveton and Blakeney, but ran out of time to cover the Morston area, Kelling or Langham.

Bird of the day for me was a Goldcrest I found flicking around a hedge at Salthouse (where the Ring Ouzels were last year) – this was the last bird I expected to find in these winds and was very chuffed with that! Other birds of note were a Song Thrush which was perched in a bush across Snipe's Marsh at Walsey Hills with a tit flock close by, which was a very good find by Eddie and I also later found 2 Mistle Thrushes sitting in a ploughed field in the Salthouse area (can't remember exact spot) – as we drove past, for a nano second I thought they were Grey Partridges! We also had a Green Woodpecker flying past in the same spot and not far from here I found a very distant Common Buzzard sitting in a tree. Eddie found a Pintail half hiding just west of the end of the East Bank. We got lucky with a Stonechat landing on a fence wire briefly east of the East Bank, after seeing a flock of Snow Buntings. Male and female Siskins were perched in bushes by Glandford Ford but did not see any Grey Wagtails. Frustratingly we did not seen the Grey Wagtail at the Sewage Works at Glandford either, which we visited twice.

Lunch was eaten very quickly whilst watching the CleySpy feeders, which added a Great Spotted Woodpecker to the list. We searched so many fields for partridges and did eventually find several Red-legged Partridges in the field next to the car park at Old Woman's Lane, but failed to find Grey Partridges – I came to the conclusion that most of them must have been shot! Other birds we expected to find, but didn't were Snipe, Jay (can you believe it!), Reed Bunting, Canada Goose, Sparrowhawk, Skylark or any Wrens. It would have been nice to find Yellowhammers and Bullfinches, but would have been surprised if we had! No sight nor sound from any owls either before 5pm. We ended the day in the NWT hides and the last birds seen were a Water Rail I spotted right at the back of Pat's Pool from Teal Hide and a Cetti's Warbler gave a little burst as we walked back at dusk to the car. We found 79 different species plus an Auk sp. from Coastguards.

Bird Race Teams in the Cley NWT Visitor Centre

We then joined the rest of the teams at the NWT Visitor Centre, where some very nice refreshments were provided for everyone, thank you very much! It was 4.35pm and we had 25 minutes to write up our list properly and hand it in before 5pm – we managed this with a couple of minutes to spare, phew! I don't know how many teams took part, but we came a respectable joint 5th with 'The High Brigade' with 79 species seen. Mind you, if there were only five teams, then we came last LOL!!! I'm sure the full list will be on the Cley Bird Club Website soon. I might have got the 3rd place winners slightly wrong as I'm sure I was told that one of them was 81 minus one, which I wasn't totally understanding, so may be amending this when I can find out exactly what the total was, so apologies if this is wrong.

HOT BIRDERS BIRD LIST – 79

1st place with 92 species – 'Happy Birders' – Congratulations!

2nd place with 85 species – 'East Norfolk Bird Club'

3rd place with 81 species – jointly: 'Men in Black' and 'Duck, Duck, Goose'

4th place with 79 species – jointly: 'Hot Birders' and 'The High Brigade'

Overall species count for the Cley Square for all teams was 122, which was higher than last year's count of 116 species.

I then took Eddie back to Coastguards to pick up his car and along Beach Road we saw a Barn Owl – typical! So we actually saw 80 species in the Cley Square today. It seemed to take forever to drive back to King's Lynn and my sofa felt extra comfortable this evening as I watched 'The Greatest Dancer' and 'The Voice'. By the way........ I watched an absolutely brilliant documentary on Christmas Eve called The Last Igloo and it was so fascinating that I watched it again last night – its still on BBC iPlayer for the next 11 days – more info here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/mediapacks/the-last-igloo