Norfolk July 2008

CLEY- Spoonbills were the target bird i wanted to see, and on arrival there were still 2 asleep on the far side of the scrape from the north hide. It had been some time since id last seen spoonbills so the thought of at least 6 today was by far enough.

Slowly they began to move or fly in and group up together With 3 adults and 3 1st summer birds. Most of the time was spent sleeping apart from the occasional preen then.... sleep again.

There were good numbers of sandwich terns ferrying back and forth from fishing trips and a couple of little egrets to add. Quite a gathering of avocets were forming on the north scrape until they all got up calling along with other waders and so time to look up to the sky for predators.
And sure enough there was, a pair of Arctic skuas flew over the hide and after a short spell proceeded to land on the water a short distance from the north hide. One was a dark morph and the other a cracking pale morph bird. The pale morph then bathed and after a short period decided to up and leave, much to the delight of the black headed gulls.
The dark morph did not depart and decided to stay for some time and was still present when i left, it appeared to lose its balance a couple of times so maybe it was ill. A nice sight to see a pair close in though, and a pale morph. Marsh harrier numbers were at least 5+ and always a part of the views at cley i think.


I moved onto Titchwell mainly for the red necked grebe that was still present off the coast there. The first sighting though was one i dont see so often now and that was a drake ruddy duck and not far off a female and young, lovely.

I didnt have any luck spotting the red necked grebe, i probably needed a scope, and with a lack of birds along the shoreline i decided to try and capture the passing terns back and forth on fishing trips for their young or partners.



What i wanted though was to capture a different compositional shot showing these small waifs in the environment against the sea as a backdrop and not an image filled shot. And also with the opportunity of other species moving along the shoreline.