Dec 28th Cley & Dec 30th Wells and Holkham Hall

Dec 28th  Cley

On Saturday, before heading to Carrow Road for the game against Tottenham that evening, I had a morning out to Cley with Mum. Wasn't exactly the most exciting of visits, but after all the food guzzling fest that was Christmas, it was nice to be out for at least a couple of hours. Out on the reserve I saw several curlew, lapwings, pink-footed geese, marsh harriers, wigeon, teal, gadwall, shelducks, common gulls, black-headed gulls, herring gulls, little egrets, a redshank and a brief glimpse of a kingfisher.

Dec 30th  Wells and Holkham Hall

Rough-legged Buzzard (for real this time!)

A few weeks ago, I went with my friend David to see the rough-legged buzzard that had been hanging around this field outside Wells for quite a while. I thought I had taken a photo of it, but it had turned out to be just a common buzzard the whole time. Amazingly, it has remained in the same place since that visit. So I decided to go and try again. This time, I managed to convince my mum to take me. It was also a lot warmer than last time and there were more people looking for it, too. My chances in seeing it seemed promising. I actually arrived moments after it disappeared, but after a short wait, it was soon spotted again. It was on the other side of the field sitting on a bush covered in berries and it sat there for quite a while. In fact it stayed put for me to make my way round to a nearby car park and to a closer spot and was still there long after I had enough photos and left for the car.

Now that I have the bird's photo, I can confidently say that I've got the right buzzard this time. Rough-legged buzzards are much paler from head to breast, like someone spilt bleach onto a common buzzard's head and all the brown has faded to a pale shade of creamy-white. The differences is like night and day (at least until you add a pale morph of a common buzzard to the mix). How did my birding friends and I get it so wrong last time completely beats me. But I'm happy now that I've fixed this mistake with the photos I got today. That's one bird ticked off my list before 2020 and my bird challenge even started.

Black-necked Grebe

With success with the rough-legged buzzard, we moved on to Holkham Hall for lunch. I also had another bird I wanted to see here. A black-necked grebe had been reported a few times on the lake this month, including yesterday. Armed with my scope, binoculars and bridge camera and studied the furthest side of the lake thoroughly. Hundreds of gulls, tufted ducks, pochards, shovelers, teal, coot and moorhens, while on the far shore, a huge gaggle of greylag geese and a herd of fallow deer, plus a great white egret and a grey heron. No grebe in sight. Then people got a bit too close to the geese on the far side and everything erupted into the air (except the deer of course, they just stayed put), even the birds on the water. Thinking that the interruption had brought the grebe out from hiding, I was about to walk further along the lake, when Mum spotted it diving underwater near the right side of the lake's island. It has to be the closest view of a black-necked grebe I've ever had!