21 February 2012
Yesterday was a birding day. Our plan was to visit three birding sites in
one day, Welches Dam, Welney and finally Lakenheath Fen. We set off at 7.55am and arrived back here at
8.20pm. Over all we had a good day out
but we couldn't do parts of Welches Dam because of the deep gravel that our
scooters sank into. At Welney the only
access to the site is by lift or up a lot of stairs. The lift is not working and it seems that it
has been like that for some time. They
will be receiving and email shortly. At
Lakenheath Fen our scooter batteries were well down on their charge and we were
concerned about getting stuck, so we gave up.
We were both getting pretty cold at that point too. OK, it doesn't sound like a good day but in fact
we still enjoyed being out and about.
The hardest part was lifting the scooters in and out of the car three
times. No matter much we enjoyed the day,
we will in future just do one site each day, not get to bolshie and try three site
in one day;-)))
I did take my camera
but even my 300mm lens was of no use yesterday.
The light was good but it didn't have the reach to get decent shots of
anything. Later in the day I got shots
of loads of real ale pump signs - but that's outside the remit of this
blog. Anyway, we stopped for tea and
toast at our usual Little Chef on the A47 and as we approached it said to Jan,
"You know, every time we stop here we always get the bins out and look
around for birds but we've never even seen a spuggie have we?" Jan agreed.
So we were sat happily eating toast and drinking tea when shouts,
"Look, a red kite!" And there
not 20 meters away from was the most beautiful red kite I've seen. The sun shone of its back, it's belly looked
great as it turned in flight ... and me damned camera was stuck in the car! By the time we had finished and returned to
the car it was gone ... ha well, another lesson learnt - for the umpteenth
time!
One the trip down we
saw species, woodpigeon, starling, blackbird (enough to make 3 or 4 pies), collared
dove, magpie, crow, great tit, black headed gull, herring gull, jackdaw, rook,
red kite, greater black backed gull, kestrel, sparrow hawk, pheasant, long
tailed tit, redwing, red legged partridge, coot, chaffinch, great crested grebe
- a total of 22 from the car.
Once we began riding
around Welches Dam we found it to be very cold.
As well as the gravel we also found the board walk at one point to be a
nightmare too. There are raised tar
stripes with stone in it along there. I
understand why it's there but for us in our scooters it really did shake us up
badly. The next problem was gravel. Now that was annoying seeing as from that
first hide we were in we could see a lot of birds in front of the next one. Anyway, we sit got another sparrow hawk
resting on a wire as we arrived, great tit, skylark, shellduck, pintail, black headed
gull, lapwing, mallard, cormorant, mute swan, shoveller, teal, tufted duck, widgeon,
pochard, moorhen, collard dove, tree and house chaffinch, dunnock, reed bunting,
goldfinch, peasant and whooper swan. But
that reed bunting cause some excitement.
We're not the best id experts so seeing a female reed bunting in the sun
like threw us quite a bit. It also
showed just how limiting our Mitchell Beazley field guide is! I've used it for year but compared to
Collins, it's poor. We had decided that
we had found all sort of rare birds but wouldn't claim one until we got home to
look at our Collins. Now we take a
Collins (we have 3 copies here), when we go out.
At Welney we only got
three, buzzard, whooper swan and skylark, and that is all I'll say about that
place for now!
On the way to
Lakenheath Fen we got pheasant, red legged partridge, rook, woodpigeon, collard dove, chaffinch, great tit and as we
were leaving we also got a green woodpecker.
I make that a total of 47 for the day.
We were frustrated at not being able to do as much as we would have liked,
but even so, we did enjoy the day overall.
Just being out together and away from Dorktown made it worth while.
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