Bird List

Just downloaded the British Birds check list! There are 573 species on the official list (inc 1 extinct - not sure how that works)though that does include oddities such as Swinhoe's storm petrel and the blue-cheeked bee eater and several others I'd never heard of. I narrowed the list down to a more reasonable 300 birds which I thought I might actually have a chance of seeing one day. Still pretty amazing for a small group of islands. My life list stands at 176 and my 2006 list was 128 species so a long way to go.
This year's firsts: grasshopper warbler, woodlark, bittern, little owl, shore lark, woodcock, spotted redshank, red throated diver and black necked grebe.
Best birds: kingfisher in Valentines park, barn owl at Snettisham, all the above

2007 wishlist: puffin, redstart, bearded tit, cettis warbler, long tailed duck, slavonian grebe, red breasted merganser
Plus trip to Farne Islands!

Going swimmingly

40 lengths - that's a whole km! About 45 minutes.

Escape to Norfolk

Off to Norfolk for a few days escapeaway. I really like the North Norfolk coast, the scenery is so w i d e,lots of wild windswept marshes and empty beaches. Also of course great birding. We got up before dawn for another go at the Snettisham goose spectacular. Unfortunately overslept and got to the beach just in time for a distant view of massive skeins heading inland like long drifts of smoke. Bird flocks in Norfolk are just enormous- you see what looks like a huge cloud moving over the water and its all birds, a bit like looking at the milky way through binoculars. Anyway our disappointment was tempered by the best view ever of a barn owl hunting over the fields and a very large raptor which turned out to be a rare visiting black kite. This had the advantage of everywhere we went over the next few days among bird watchers they would say 'oh and we've heard there's a black kite at Snettisham...' and we could sort of yawn and say 'oh yes we've seen THAT'!
Other things I really liked -
The boat trip to see the seals on Blakeney Point, 50+ grey and commong seals including lots of cute baby grey seals all fluffy white. We got really close and they were in the water alongside the boat - hadn't realised quite how big seals can be.


Going out of our back door onto the marsh at night and seeing stars in real dark.
Having a real open fire.
Ticking off some other bird - red throated divers, common scoter, spotted redshank
Having an excuse to buy more maps.

Birthday Birds

I put all my birthday money this year towards a Hawk Walk but as they only do them in winter it meant a bit of a long wait till today.
There were eight of us plus Mike and Emma Raphael who run the hawk days and we had a great afternoon hunting round Wrest Park with their 3 harris hawks.

We got 2 pheasants - Here's Altair with number 1 - but none to bring home - they were going in the Raphael's freezer for Christmas I gather!

Very exciting - thanks everyone!