Snow Bunting
Our big news is that we are moving to a new house!
As I type this I am surrounded by the utter chaos of the move. The packers are in and everything is disappearing fast in readiness for our actual move tomorrow. They actually started packing last week and the first thing they packed was all our food and cooking utensils 😂😂😂😂
The house has been on the market for, well forever …..
Post lock down number one, and curtesy of the stamp duty holiday, there was a lot of interest and it finally sold. Our plan was to move somewhere cheaper where we could afford to buy a place with land while downsizing the house a little. We are moving to a very remote barn conversion in Worcestershire with 4 acres of land for our horses plus lots of habitat potential for birds, large pond, scrub area etc.
Last Thursday I spent the day birding in Norfolk. My target birds were Red-breasted Flycatcher, Snow and Lapland Bunting. The drive to Norfolk was a fairly typical one. Good progress to Peterborough and then very slow onto the east coast with lots of tractors bringing in the autumn harvest of cow cake and potatoes.
The Red-breasted Flycatcher had spent the last two days in an area known as the Dell at Well’s woods. This is a well known hot spot for vagrants being the first bit of habitat they encounter after crossing the channel. I’ve been there a few times over the years and saw my first every Olive-backed Pipits with Jeremy there a few years ago. The Red-breasted Flycatcher breeds in eastern Europe and across Central Asia and is migratory, wintering in south Asia. It is a regular passage migrant in western Europe with fifty or so autumn records in the UK in a good year. This particular bird was a first winter one, e.g. hatched this spring. Unlike most flycatchers, they can be quite restless flitting around the canopy in a manner more akin to a warbler which can make them quite hard to tie down. It hence took me to lunch time to get a reasonable bins view of the bird but no photos. For a first winter bird it struck me as being quite well marked with an attractive pale red breast and grey crown.
Next stop after my packed lunch was RSPB Titchwell some ten miles along the coast. I was heading for Thornham point a mile along the coast where confiding Snow and Lapland buntings had been reported. The adult Snow Bunting was reported as being very confining showing down to a few feet at times as it fed in amongst the seaweed on the high tide line. Snow Buntings, as the name suggests, are far North and Artic breeders with just a few breeding in Scotland. In summer plumage the males are very striking and attractive with all white heads and underparts contrasting with a black mantle and wing tips. In autumn and winter birds develop a sandy/buff wash to their plumage and the males have more mottled upperparts. As I arrived at Thornham point there were a couple of other birders watching the adult male Snow Bunting which was much too busy feeding in the washed up vegetation to take any notice of its admirers. I spent a very enjoyable hour or so watching and photographing this very entertaining bird before looking for the Lapland Buntings. I was told by other birders that they had flown onto the salt marsh behind the shore a couple of hours ago and indeed there was no sign of them along the beach. I left Norfolk for the long drive home quite contented that I had seen two out of three of my target birds.
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| Snow Bunting |
Yesterday I decided to have another crack at Laplands a bit closer to home in the Malverns. I also had the motivation that this was probably going to be one of my new local patches being only 8 miles or so from my new home. Two Laplands had been reported socialising with Meadow Pipits over the preceding couple of days but, unlike most coastal birds, they were said to be quite elusive and hard to pin down. They were located near the summit of the North Hill. As it was clearly going to be quite a climb from the car park I left my scope in the car and travelled with just my bins, camera and “baby” 500mm lens. I would guess it was about a mile from the car park to the summit and I enjoyed and needed the exercise – my Fitbit told me that I had climbed 274 flights of stairs by the time I reached the top. The challenge in locating the Laplands was immediately obvious, there were at least a hundred Meadow Pipits flitting around in vegetation that was long enough for them to completely disappear in. They only showed well in flight or if they wandered onto one of the paths. I had hoped that, as it was Monday, there would be less disturbance by walkers but the Meadow Pipits took flight as soon as anyone came remotely close. In the end I just sat down on the North slope of the summit, eat my packed lunch and waited. If I looked at a Meadow Pipit through my bins once I must have done it a thousand times but after 4 hours I was eventually rewarded with a very brief view of the two Laplands before they were again disturbed and flew off.
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| The elusive Lapland Bunting |
The long weekends birding left my year total on 208 so no chance of getting to 250 this year, especially with, I fear, another full lock down surely just around the corner.
Nice!!! Congratulations on the move - hope it goes well - we'll miss you, you 'defector'!!! x
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