Nov 6th Holkham Hall and Titchwell

Young Fallow Deer bucks fighting!

It may be a little late, but today, I am back at Holkham Hall to show my Aunt Barbara and my mum the deer rut. The red deer are no longer roaring as their rutting season is pretty much over now. The fallow deer, on the other hand, are still in action, though it is starting to wind down. They are much easier to approach than the red deer, so we were able to sneak up to the large heard using trees as cover. Despite the noise of a leaf blower going off in the background, you could still hear their grunting and barking as the deer continued communicate with each other. A few fights did break out, but not many. Most of these fights were between young bucks that were practicing their fighting skills, nothing too serious. However there was one pair of mature bucks that really went to town on each other for a short while behind some trees at the opposite side of the herd.

Two mature bucks fighting!

 

Surrounded!

Time was passing as we continued watching this herd from behind a tree and the deer were getting used to our presence. So much so that they decided to leave the field and move towards us into the small copse of trees we were watching from. Soon we were surrounded by fallow deer. They ignored us and carried on grazing and rutting as if we weren't even there! During our time watching this herd, we also had several large skeins of pink-footed geese fly over the estate, heading north to Holkham Pines nearby, calling away loudly with their chorus of 'pink-wink-wink' calls as they went.

Pink-footed Geese

Golden Plovers 

After a quick search for red deer on the opposite side of the hall, which we failed to see any, we left Holkham and drove down to Titchwell in time for lunch. Once lunch was over, we went for a walk to the beach, stopping at one of the hides along the way. From the pools, there was plenty to see, including snipe, dunlin, black-tailed godwits, ringed plovers, lapwing, linnets, ruff, teal, wigeon, shovelers, shelducks, brent geese, curlews and a really large flock of golden plover that carpeted three spits of land at the freshwater pool. When we got to the beach, the tide was out and a vast bed of mussels was exposed. This of course attracted a good selection of waders, which included bar-tailed godwits, oystercatchers, redshanks, turnstones and even a little egret.

Snipe

Brent Geese

Female Teal

Male Teal

Shelduck

Ringed Plover

Redshank

Male Linnet

Female Linnet

Curlew

Dunlin

Bar-tailed Godwit

Black-tailed Godwit

 


Female Hen Harrier!

On the way back, I came across a few groups of people staring out on various parts of the reserve through their scopes. A couple of groups were looking at a lone, distant Chinese water deer grazing in the saltmarsh to my right, while others were just looking at the birds on the pools that we already saw. There was one man, however, that had his scope on something that was extremely exciting. I peered into the eyepiece of his scope and there, preening itself atop of a bush, was a female hen harrier! It was very far away and the low, bright, setting sun was a bit blinding, which of course only made the bird look like a fuzzy blob in these photos, but these are my first ever shots I've taken of this species! This is a rare bird of prey in the UK these days, so it was great sight to see, even if the photos are terrible.