The Autistic Naturalist: Sep 11th Cley

Monday, 11 September 2017

Sep 11th Cley

Woodpigeon welcomes you to Cley

It just isn't our luck lately at Cley. On our previous visit last month, the pools were disturbed by a herd of cattle. Today, it was disturbed by diggers and they were right in front of the main hides. So we avoided these hides and looked out of Bishop's Hide at the other end of Pat's Pool instead. Not that there were much to see anyway. It was pretty empty, not to mention very windy. The only thing that was note worthy were the swarms of house martins swooping low over the reserve. Everywhere we went, these fast black and white birds were hard to miss as they crossed our paths and skimmed over our heads, whilst also battling against the wind. They were quite a challenge to photograph on the wing still even with the wind slowing them down, but I think I managed to get some good shots of them.

Work going on outside the main hides

House Martin

Teal

Canada and Greylag Geese

We then walked along the East Bank to try and find the pectoral sandpiper that was apparently somewhere on the Serpentine (the marshy area adjacent to the bank). Coming across a group of twitchers was a good sign, but the birding gods was not with me today as it had disappeared. It was also starting to rain, but thankfully, we managed to reach the shelter at the end of the East Bank before it absolutely tipped it down. At least there were plenty of waders and wildfowl to look at while waiting for the rain to pass us by. There were curlews, redshanks, dunlin, godwits, cormorants, ruffs, sandwich terns and a large mixed flock of greylag and Canada geese. I was also told that there were a couple of Caspian gulls about too, but they are a bit tricky to tell apart with the other large gulls, so I have no idea if I have got a photo of one or not. I think they were mostly juvenile great black-backed gulls myself, but it would be nice to be corrected.