Norfolk Day 1

Me, Mark and Andy joined the York Bird Club trip to Norfolk this weekend, we set off early Friday morning calling at Cuckney in Nottinghamshire on the way where a drake Lesser Scaup had been on a small lake there for the last two days, no sign of it this morning though despite extensive searching. We carried on into Norfolk and the first port of call was Welney WWT for the white spotted Bluethroat, this would be a tick for Mark and I was hoping to get some pics of it after the recent series of photos on Birguides, several Whooper Swans remained, a drake Garganey was seen from one of the hides plus Marsh Harrier and Hobby hunted the reserve but it was a long wait before the Bluethroat gave a quick snatch of song, showed briefly in a bush then dived back into cover, Andy heard the song and saw it in flight, Mark got the brief view in the bush but I was in the wrong place and missed it, we hung around for over an hour more but it never showed again and the day was getting on. We headed over to the Brecks and an alternative site I had been given for Stone Curlew, a place called Foxhole Heath but when we got there we found the area fenced off with notices not to stop so we ended up going to Weeting Heath anyway, three birds were seen here but as usual they were distant and in the heat haze, also a couple of Buzzards were around but little else. The original plan was also to have gone to Lakenheath but it had got too late for that so we just took a steady drive over to Kelling where we were staying.

at Cuckney, I had been hoping the Lesser Scaup was going to be this close

a late Whooper

close Sedge

Hairy Dragonfly