May 3rd Catton Park

Dawn at Catton Park

Today is International Dawn Chorus Day. It is a bit of a tradition for me to get up really early and go somewhere in Norfolk with Dad to listen to the birds. This year, however, I had to go solo to my local park to do it. Lockdown Dawn Chorus Day was quite a strange concept, but it was kind of interesting. Believe it or not, I've never done a dawn chorus at my local park before. Before lockdown, visits to it was few and far between. It is a nice place to go, but I always favoured Mousehold or Strumpshaw as my preferred 'go to' places. Since lockdown though, I've been visiting Catton Park more often, mainly because it is the closest place to visit right now with a nice mix of woodland and open grassland to explore.

This morning, I arrived to Catton Park at 5am and the sun was already rising, producing a pink and orange glow. A light mist floats above the dewy wet grassy fields that dampens my boots. I was the only person around until 6:30am when a few dog walkers and joggers appeared. Woodpigeons, wrens, robins and blackbirds were in full voice. I wandered around the park, making a few videos that you can see below. The more I walked, the more species I added to my dawn chorus list which includes; blackcaps, blue tits, great tits, nuthatches, song thrush, pied wagtail (brief fly over), magpies, jackdaws, carrion crows, lesser black-backed gulls, stock doves, chaffinches, chiffchaffs, goldcrests and a jay.

My big highlights from my walk were a green woodpecker (that surprised me at the end of one of these videos, but I never saw it) and a few whitethroats. I don't recall seeing whitethroats at this park before, at least not during my more recent visits, so I was pretty pleased to hear them and plenty of them too. However, there was one bird I was hoping to hear that I heard during a random walk on Thursday. What I heard was a lesser whitethroat. I've never heard one at this park before and I was extremely happy to be the one to discover it despite not actually seeing it. Sadly though, it did not add its voice to the chorus this morning. A minor disappointment, but it was still a good walk that I felt showed me a secret time of this place that few people have probably experienced and it has brought me closer to this park than ever before.