Titchwell Thrills

Nice day forecast, I felt the RSPB reserve at Titchwell on the North Norfolk coast calling for a re-visit.  Now this is one place I don’t mind spending £5 for a days birding!  The site has many different habitats so there is always something of interest to look for whatever the season.  The only downside is it is a very popular place, the most visited RSPB reserve in the Country, but everyone’s here to enjoy the same experience and it never feels overcrowded once people spread out.

The first spot I stopped at was the feeding station at the back of the visitors centre.  A steady procession of small birds came to the feeders which is great for close up photography but to get them in a natural setting was the source of great frustration, always a twig in the way!

Don’t talk with your beak full! A Goldfinch (Carduelis carduelis) at one of the many feeders

I continued on the boardwalk past the dragonfly pools where you can imagine the larvae are waiting for the first signs of summer so they can emerge into those flying jewels. Through reedy scrub, quiet now but in a few months will be reverberating to the song of the returning warblers.  Onto the main path to the sea and past the freshwater lagoons and marshes.  There was one particular spot, close to the bank, that was a magnet for a mixture of waders.  I plonked myself down and enjoyed a wonderful hour or so photographing them.

Black-tailed Godwit (Limosa limosa) is the second largest of our waders. Like all shorebirds at this time of the year in it’s greys of winter plumage. It took ages before one posed among these dead plants, they preferred to feed in the open water where their long legs and bill give them an advantage

Our other Godwit is the Bar-tailed (Limosa lapponica). A bit smaller than the Black-tailed, it has more patterned plumage and a slightly up-curved bill. In summer this bird is a striking brick red in colour on the underparts

A different ‘style’ of wader. Chunky body, short bill and legs, feeding on the mudflats in a stop start action. This is a plover a Grey Plover (Pluvialis squatarola) another wader with a lovely summer plumage this time black and white. They breed in the high-arctic

While I was engrossed in act of filming these different species something caused every bird on the reserve to take flight in panic.  It had to be a bird of prey.  I looked for a Peregrine Falcon or Sparrowhawk scything through the flocks but it was when I looked up the culprit became clear, the massive shape of an immature White-tailed Eagle (Haliaeetus albicilla).  With a wing-span of 8 feet (2.4m) this is Northern Europe’s largest raptor, it has the nick-name of the ‘flying barn door’.  Now, eagles in Norfolk are not un-heard of but are a very rare occurrence, this is only my third sighting, they breed on Western Isles of Scotland like Mull but some do drift across the North Sea from the Continent.  I would like to say I got some stunning shots to record this event, sadly no, by the time I got my wits together, picked my jaw from the floor and the camera focused it was very distant.

A heavily cropped record shot of the White-tailed Eagle, you can still make out the massive bill and huge wings

There was still one more surprise in store.  As I made my way back to the car a Little Egret flew over the footpath landing on the Thornham Marshes.  Nothing unusual in that, Little Egrets have become quite numerous in recent years, however it landed next to another egret that dwarfed it, a Great White Egret (Egretta alba).  This is only my third ever sighting (my first was on the day my daughter was born, twitchers do the strangest things!) but people passing by didn’t seem that bothered, perhaps they are no longer a very rare visitor.

The statuesque Great White Egret catches the breeze