Spotting Sandpipers at Titchwell RSPB and a Great Reed Warbler at Snettisham

 

Spotted Sandpiper

The slow spring for very rare birds in the UK has continued into early summer with nothing in the past two weeks on the bird radar requiring a drop everything twitch. Without the stunning Elenora’s falcon in Kent last month the spring would have been very poor indeed. It has certainly been the quietest spring since I retired from my full time stressful managerial role at the ripe old age of 57 some 9 years ago which allowed me to become a serious twitcher. Perhaps the past few years in spring and summer were unusually good with a mega role call including Asian Desert Warbler, Whiskered Tern, River Warbler, Red-necked Stint and Little Bustard to name but a few.

 

So the past few weeks have been mainly about lots of gardening with the occasional bit of local birding. The new fruit garden is in its second year and has matured well. The second year strawberry plants that I propagated from runners from our previous house have cropped very heavily with yummy fresh strawberries on the menu at most meals and jam about to be produced. The summer raspberries fruit on the previous years growth so this year will be their first fruiting year and they are ladened with rapidly ripening fruit. The Blueberry crop from my three fifteen year old plants are also showing great promise. Every gardening year has its successes and failures, its part and parcel of the hobby, and this year a particularly hard late frost decimated the tender growth and flowers on the Mulberry bush. I thought it had died but a month later fresh growth started to appear. Lesson learned; I will protect it next spring.

 

The home grown hanging baskets are just starting to come into their own and will soon be one of the key features of the garden. In the greenhouse we have just started picked salad tomatoes and the cucumbers are a week or so away from picking. In the veg garden we have been eating our own new potatoes and yummy beetroot for several weeks.

I was, however, quite literally getting twitchy feet so last Friday I decided to spend the day birding in Norfolk with a particular focus on two birds neither of which would be lifers but none the less were very good birds in their own right.

 

The American Spotted Sandpiper falls into to the very well populated category on my UK bird list of birds seen badly. The only one I had seen was a winter plumage bird on the south coast a  few years back. In winter it is very similar to our own Common Sandpiper but in summer plumage, yes you’ve guessed it, its breast is covered in attractive large spots.

 

The drive from home to Norfolk is dual carriageway and motorway for the first two hours with the final 90 minutes on smaller roads. The traffic was quite light and after one coffee break I arrived at the wonderful RSPB reserve at Titchwell on the Norfolk coast just after 9. The car park was emptier than I expected and I was soon kitted up and making my way towards the freshwater marsh where the Spotted Sandpiper had been feeding for the past couple of days. On the way I paused to photograph a very showy adult Sedge Warbler who appeared to be totally oblivious of the human traffic on the footpath.

    

Sedge Warbler
I have often wondered how and when most birds acquire their wariness of humans. You would assume that this would be an inherited characteristic hardwired into their DNA but many juvenile birds are remarkably confining only seemingly learning to be quite rightly wary of the human threat later. Perhaps its simply that they have not quite mastered the art of flying enough to run away or perhaps the more confiding individuals simply and sadly just don’t make it to adulthood.

 

A small group of birders were scoping the freshwater marsh from the adjacent path and a quick enquiry soon had me looking at the handsome summer plumage Spotted Sandpiper through my scope. 

The view across the fresh marsh

The Spotted Sandpiper breeds near fresh water across most of North America where they essentially replace our Common Sandpiper. They migrate to the southern United States, the Caribbean and South America for the winter and are very rare vagrants to western Europe.  The spottiness varies greatly from individual to individual and I have read that the overall health of Spotted Sandpipers is indicated by the spottiness of the bird.

 

The Titchwell Avocets seem to have had a successfully breeding season with  numerous juveniles in various stages of growth being closed watched by their parents. Avocets are very good parents and furiously protect their offspring from any threat. The Titchwell Avocets seem to have taken a particular dislike to the Spotted Sandpiper and were very intolerant of it continuously harassing and flushing it such that it was rarely settled. It was ranging from the bund at the far end of the marsh to two small closer islands occasionally walking down the margin towards us until it was inevitably flushed by an Avocet. It was feeding very much like our Common Sandpiper, dipping its long beak into the mud, but it did not bob its tail in the characteristic way our Common Sandpiper does. It looked very smart through the scope but heat haze limited photography to somewhat distant record shorts. After an hour or so I took a gentle stroll around the rest of the reserve where notable sightings included a Bittern fly pass, two Sandwich Terns resting on the island and four or five hunting Marsh Harriers including a strikingly pale individual with almost white underwings.

Avocet

 

Spoonbill

After lunch I made my way back up the coast to Snettisham where the Great Reed Warbler was located. I have seen two Great Reed Warblers before in the UK including a very loud showy individual in Nottingham last year. The Great Reed Warbler rates as a 2-star rarity in the Colins bird bible which equates to one or a few annual records. It resembles our common Reed Warbler but is much larger with a noticeably larger head, heavy bill with a dark tip, and a broad, pale eyebrow. They breed throughout mainland Europe and migrate to sub-Saharan Africa to over winter. The loud gruff croaking song carries a long way and is quite distinctive from the common Reed Warblers out of key scratchy rant.

 

RBA gave me a map location some one mile along the coast from the car park and after 15 minutes’ walk I spotted two other birders scoping a reed bed. From around 100 meters away I could hear the characteristic and very loud song of the Greater Reed Warbler. I chatted to the other two friendly birders who told me that the bird had been singing continuously but they had only glimpsed it once. Right of cue the warbler then perched up on a tall reed stem and started hammering out its gruff croaking song. On and on it went with barely a pause for breath in its futile attempt to attract a mate. The reeds were waving around in the strong wind but the warbler hung on for dear life determined to attract a mate. I watched it for quite some time, mesmerised by its continuous song  sung with its mouth wide open displaying its bright orange throat. Come late afternoon I made my way back along the coast to my car very satisfied with my day out birding in Norfolk.

   

  

Great Reed Warbler

Footnote – my blogs are posted with sometimes rather imaginative spelling and grammar due to my extreme dyslexia!