Nov 20th Cley

Wigeon

Grey skies with rain followed us to Cley this morning, but soon brightened while we were there. The reserve was a lot more quiet since my last visit here. There wasn't a large variety of birds to see out on the pools today. Wigeon were the most dominant species that I could see from the 3 main hides with large gathering along one side of Simmond's Scrape and many more dotted across the rest of the set of pools at the centre of the reserve. Small numbers of teal, shovelers, shelducks, ruff, redshanks, lapwings, black-headed gulls and single figures of avocet and black-tailed godwit were also about with them, but were nowhere near as abundant as the wigeon were. Marsh harriers were pretty active this morning over the surrounding reed beds, while a water rail was busy foraging at the edges of the waterlogged reed margin between two of the hides. I also managed to spot a bittern fly over the pools, but I was in an awkward position to get a photograph of it before it flew out of view.

Shelduck

Teal

Avocet

Carrion Crow

Juvenile Mute Swan

Black-tailed Godwit

Black-headed Gull

Lesser (front) and Great Black-backed Gulls

Ruff

Marsh Harrier

Water Rail

Black Brant (the one at the back)

While at Dawke's Hide (the middle hide out of the three), I met two men with scopes who were looking at a flock of dark-bellied brent geese in a distant field near to the beach car park. Within this flock, they were able to spot a black brant goose. To the untrained eye, this scarce migrant from North America looks pretty similar to it's dark-bellied cousins. However, once you notice the bright white flanks it does stand out from the crowd slightly. After lunch, we parked over at the beach car park for a better look at it. Annoyingly though, they all took up into the air as I made my way to them, but thankfully they circled back and landed not too far from me. It was a matter of spotting the odd one out. A task easier said than done. Goose blindness occurred. I was seeing all but the goose I was after. Luckily, the same two men I met earlier were here too and with some help, I was able to locate it. After winning a battle against the wind, I was also able to get a (rather distant) photo of it as well.

Brent Geese

Pink-footed Geese

On the way home, we made a quick stop by a field between Salthouse and Kelling which was full of pink-footed geese feeding on the leftovers of sugar beet. I took these photos from inside the car and as you can see, there was an awful lot of them. From one end to the other! A very wintery Norfolk scene!