The Autistic Naturalist: Dec 4th Titchwell

Dawn in Norwich

Drawing open the curtains of my living room window at 7am this morning uncovered a spectacular orange sunrise with two celestial bodies glowing even brighter above it all. The largest of the two is of course the moon in the form of a thin crescent. The other, a bright smaller dot to the right of it, is Venus. A wonderful sight to start a day of birdwatching.

The Moon and Venus

Titchwell this morning

Today, Mum and I travelled through the thick fog to Titchwell. Surprisingly, the coast was completely free of fog, which lingered across the rest of Norfolk all day. The sun was shining low and overwhelmingly bright over Titchwell, but it was still pretty nippy. After a quick look at the sightings board inside the RSPB shop, we made our way out onto the reserve for our walk. However, as soon as we exited the door, Mum spotted a stoat under the bird feeders. Unfortunately, though I did see it, I was not quick enough to snap a photo of it despite it pausing a couple of times before vanishing completely.

Moorhen

Kestrel

Snipe

Seeing the stoat was a great way to kick off this visit on a high. But, what I really wanted to see most of all today was a water pipit. It has been six years since I last saw one (which was from Fen Hide at Strumpshaw) and while they had been seen in many places I've visited every winter ever since, it seems that these small pale brown birds just like to not show up for me when I'm around. Water pipits are one of those species that can be easily overlooked or confused for another member of the pipit family. Though they breed in mountainous regions of central and southern Europe, such as the Alps, in winter they spend a lot of time near water, hence their name. My best bet of seeing one are areas of short wet vegetation next to pools of water.

Golden Plover

The pools were seemingly empty of birds from my first impression, but a quick scan later soon tallied up the numbers. Golden plover outnumbered everything else in a band of gold and white near the centre of the freshwater pool, followed by lapwings and with smaller numbers of wigeon, mallard, teal, shelduck, dunlin and brent geese dotted here and there, too. More brent geese were arriving as the morning turned to afternoon in large untidy skeins boosting the original number into the hundreds. We also saw a couple of marsh harriers patrolling the reed beds on the far side of the freshwater pool and a slightly distant kestrel perched on a post out on the saltmarshes. But there was still no sign of any water pipits.

Lapwings

Brent Geese

Greylag

Shelducks

Redshank

Water Pipit

Thankfully, my luck was to change while I was scanning the wet stubble by the side of the Parrinder Hide facing the freshwater pool. Or was it? While I was being reassured by some passing birders, I looked back at the photos I took of this LBJ (Little Brown Job). The sun made it quite difficult to view it properly as it was low and blinding in the direction of where the bird was hiding making the images I was taking not the highest of quality. But after some debating to myself, what I took was in fact a meadow pipit. I went back to the spot to try again and this time I was more positive that I had found my water pipit. If you look carefully, you can clearly see the white supercilium (stripe above the eye) which the meadow pipit lacks. Finally! A water pipit at long last!

Meadow Pipit

Sea Watching

With water pipit in the bag, I made my way to the beach alone with Mum heading back the other way to the café. The tide was out and while there were some people scanning the sea from the dunes, many other sea watchers made the short walk down to the tideline. I went to join them to check out what they can see with their scopes. One man was really friendly and showed me a very distant guillemot floating close to the shore further down the beach and a very handsome eider drake that was much close by to us. I couldn't see the merganser they were looking at though, but I did end up spotting a flock of six common scoter for them instead. The shoreline was also pretty busy with plenty of hungry waders and gulls, such as oystercatchers, bar-tailed godwits, dunlin, turnstones and a curlew. It was a fine end to my visit as I made my way back to reunite with my Mum for lunch before leaving.