A proper twitch

 Tuesday 20/10/2020

I spent today on the North Norfolk coast around Holme-next-the Sea. It was an unplanned day out as I have a long to-do list and the weather outside was dismal, wet and gloomy. It looked like being like an office day.

Most days I check the internet for the previous day's bird news through Cambridge Bird Club and the Norfolk Ornithologists' Association. Monday had been a real red letter day. I don't think I have ever seen so many bird names in red ink; the colour used to denote species that are cosmically, mind bendingly, off the scale in terms of rarity and desirability. 

For some birders rarity is the attraction, presenting the chance to add a new "tick" to your life-list. I must admit that I am a bit drawn to that. Despite having seen a huge variety of birds in different parts of the world, there will always be more birds that I haven't seen than those that I have. Even so, only a few of them are on my birding to-do list. 

To make my list they have to be charismatic, gripping to look at, or perhaps exotic in some way. Some birds are symbolic of other things, other places, other times. Birds of prey, all birds of prey, even little kestrels and merlins, are majestic; they exude power and wildness. And I suppose some birds are just comical; they have novelty value. 

Monday's red-letter birds included an Eastern stonechat, a dusky warbler, an Eastern rufous bush-chat, Pallas's warblers and a two red-flanked blue-tails. All of these birds are well out of their normal ranges, in Asia and Africa. 

It was the blue-tails that had me hooked because, like robins, redstarts, wheatears, flycatchers and stonechats, they simply look perfect to me: perfectly proportioned and, well, a bit cocky. This is a bird I have always wanted to see and so off I went. I never do that.

Birders at Home Dunes

After half an hour on the muddy road through the Fens, splattered by lorries and tractors I was ready to quit and go home but I pushed through towards King's Lynn and saw the sky begin to brighten. By the time I had passed Hunstanton there was a big patch of blue and the sun was coming out. This could be the day.

I joined over a dozen birders who were stood in a socially distanced semicircle as though at an outdoor production in a natural amphitheatre. Yes, the blue-tail had been seen sitting on a fence not long before I arrived. I stuck it out for an hour and decided that this scene wasn't for me. I’m too impatient. I might have to wait all day for just a glimpse of a little bird and, anyway, I don't like crowds and I hate queueing. I just not a member of the twitchers' fraternity. I'm an outsider who likes to go his own way and I can't keep still for long. So I left. Perhaps I’m not dedicated or hungry enough to merit seeing a blue-tail.

At the Holme Dunes Bird Observatory it was relatively quiet. It’s a place that always produces something for me as it has a variety of habitats, a shop and a cafe. Now this was more my scene. I wandered on my own with a hot Cornish pastie in hand, stopping whenever a movement caught my eye. The warden at the ringing station told me where a second blue-tail had been seen and I spent another hour or two pacing the same length of path over and over until most of the other visitors had gone, leaving a hide vacant. It was as good a place to stare at as any and I needed to sit down. 

Out of nowhere a little bird popped up from the brambles, paused, looked around and promptly moved round the corner out of sight. It wasn't what I expected in that it wasn't blue, it was pale cream and orange, like autumn leaves in the sunshine. Nor was it pugnacious like a robin or a chat. It was active but skulking like an American warbler. This was a bird that was happiest low down in the middle of a bush. But it was stunning to look at, so I just looked at it and tried to burn the image to memory, using my eye and brain as a camera…Camera? I didn’t take a picture, there was no time.

Female red-flanked bluethroat. (Debbie Pain)

I spent another hour in the hide, hoping my bird would pop up again, convinced that it was still in the same few bushes. The clouds were gathering and I thought I might go back to the first bird in the hope of getting a photo before the light went. Just as I left the car-park two photographers stopped me from running over this handsome toad-in-the-road. 

Toad-in-the-road

By the time I was back at the golf course the sun had come back and I had high hopes of seeing the bird and having it to myself. There was only one birder there but he told me it had not been seen all afternoon.

A whole day devoted to getting a mere glimpse of one little bird? Is that insane? I decided to end on a "high" by visiting Thornham Harbour where I spent the hour before sunset notching up bird sightings and simply enjoying being where I was. The tide was out and the beds of the muddy creeks were littered with shellfish, tiny crabs and marine worms all accessible by dunlin, redshanks, egrets, godwits, oystercatchers, ducks and gulls. 

Spotted redshank

Redshanks are not the most numerous of waders in the wash by a long way, but they are confiding and photogenic. One of the redshanks in the creek was running downstream, lifting its stilt-like legs high in a goose-step. It was behaving more like a greenshank, running around chasing small shrimps. It was built like a greenshank with slim, long neck, long legs and an exaggeratedly long and thin needle-like bill This was a spotted redshank and not something expected to see.  A flock of little brown finches called twites fed on seeds in the salt-marsh before going to bed. Far off I could hear brent geese and pink feet calling. A flock of snipes flew round me, possibly disturbed by an approaching marsh harrier on its way to roost at Titchwell RSPB Reserve. 

Dunlin

I watched the sun set on the marsh and set off home. The only talk-radio that I could tune into was BBC Radio Norfolk where the news featured the fact that, on today’s exceptionally hide tide, the largest number of knots ever recorded in the Wash had assembled at Snettisham. The count was roughly 140,000 birds, all from Canada or Greenland. Where else but in Norfolk would this be headline news? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-54592215

Sunset at Thornham