Meadow Petrel

I've never seen this before but am ready for a chorus of 'it happens all the time and you might notice it more if you stopped pining after foxes'.  Anyhow, these Meadow Petrels Pipits were hovering over the sea to catch flies I assume. Only did it for a minute or so, but it didn't look like it was an accident. I'll spend a bit more time with them tomorrow to see if they do it again. 

 The final shot is what one of them was doing about 20 minutes earlier.

Migration, then not, then an Owl. Weekly highlights 19/10/2014

The beginning of the week was filled with migration, which is brilliant, even when everything is grey.  Thousands of Brent Geese moving past, thrushes overhead, finches coming in off the sea and a couple of out of place Robins to name but a few.

This Wheatear wasn't doing what the usual Wheatears do where they normally do what they do.  Which may or may not be significant, but I suspect it was due to its very recent arrival that it just sat about for a bit.

The next day the sun came out and another Wheatear did much the same thing somewhere else.

And the migrants continued.  This little fellow was still damp from his exertions across the North Sea but seemed very happy with the local fare.

The local population of Meadow Pipits was also swollen by newcomers.

And then the wind turned direction and it all stopped.  Which was rubbish.  So at the weekend I went to see an Owl with long ears.  Didn't manage to get shots without something in front of its face, but nonetheless it was a cracking bird and had views that bettered anything I have had before of one of them.  It was big too.

I dare say that if it hangs around for a couple of days some obliging chap(s) will clear the bracken, put a suitably gnarly perch out with a smorgasbord of freshly killed small mammals available for the bird in order for it to perform for the big lenses gain sustenance in view of all this horrible weather what we are having. 

Oh, and I saw a Phalarope too.  I like Phalaropes.  Anyway, here is a picture of a feather.

In which I actually find a rare bird - Weekly Highlights 28/9/2014

The bird of the week, certainly in terms of ubiquity, was Meadow Pipit.  Everywhere.  Regardless of what I was hoping to see, there was another Meadow Pipit.  Here is one that posed long enough for a decent photo if the foliage hadn't interfered.

Wheatears still regular and plentiful, but evading the range of the lens by being generally flighty.  When I was fortunate enough to have one in range, it was raining.

So I was sitting in a pub garden with the wife, mulling over the menu while keeping an eye on the nearby saltmarsh (like you do) and this bird flies past.  Slowly.  Crikey, I thought, that is a chuffing big Egret and it isn't really flying like the normal ones do and look at its legs and its neck and its beak and its everything really actually.  It then landed in a nearby field an it was HUGE!  I notified my long-suffering wife that the bird wasn't a Little Egret and that the pleasant time in the pub garden was henceforth brought to a close.  In two short words.

Great Egret, Salthouse 25/09/2014

It was then seen to fly from Salthouse, over the East Bank and over Cley Marshes - I do wonder how many people missed it due to the height it was gaining.  It was subsequently reported in Wells and Stiffkey (?).  But fly on it did, hence the record shot that is before you.


I saw other birds on Friday and Saturday too, and did other stuff too.  Here are some of them.

Lapwings!

A Grey Plover!

A duck!

Cley, Sunday

Meadow Pipit

Fair few of these moving about at the moment.  No complaints from me!

Meadow Pipit in flight

Spent some time with a couple of skulking Meadow Pipits today, the shots on the ground are ok, but every one of them has some inconvenient vegetation in the shot.  Might be able to salvage a couple of them though/  One of them did that flying thing but then the light was at the wrong angle, the shutter speed wrong and arguably the ISO setting was wrong.  I know, excuses excuses...

Meadow Pipit doing flying