Hi, Cley!

Cley Marshes is one of Britain's top birding spots and not too far from where we were staying. We spent one full afternoon there, and went back for an evening visit (where we just walked to the beach rather than going into the reserve) later in the week. Saw a LOT of stuff, here are edited highlights.

Trip one was on the Tuesday, after our seal trip to Blakeney point in the morning. That had been under grey skies, but by the time we reached Cley the sun was out. From the car park there were swirling Swifts to photograph, which were briefly scattered when this male Kestrel breezed by.

We paid our fiver each, and set off towards the three hides at the centre of the reserve, noting singing Cetti's and Whitethroat on the way. Once ensconsed in the first hide, we got to work scanning the lagoon viewable from here, which held many Avocets and Shelducks, a Little Ringed Plover and various ducks, with Swifts and hirundines skimming over the water.

The Avocets had chicks, so were on high alert, beating up crows, chasing Marsh Harriers, and bombing this poor Shelduck. The following sequence of photos show an Avocet preparing to mug a female Mallard...

... with unexpected consequences. Don't mess with Mrs Mallard! She had ducklings nearby so was feeling just as combative as the Avocet.

Another proud mum - Shoveler with five ducklings. This is not an especially common breeding bird in Britain so I expect the folks in charge here are as pleased to see this family as I was.

The lure of the many Swifts, in nice sunshine for a change, was irresistable and I took more than 100 shots of them, most of which ended up in the bin but I'm happy with this one.

More duckling goodness, these are young Mallards. Past the age of extreme vulnerability, they were left more or less to their own devices while their mum did battle with Avocets (see above).

We looked in at the other hides, with views overlapping that from the first, and then retraced our steps to the main road, from where we followed the side road to the beach. A raised path alongside the road gives great views across the marshes.

Open-country and marshland birds were whizzing about all over the place. This Meadow Pipit paused on the overhead wires for a few photos.

We reached the shingle beach and went down to the shore to see what was going by at sea. Sandwich and Little Terns, various gulls, Cormorants... and a surprise, this Brent Goose which surely should have been somewhere inside the Arctic Circle at this time of year.

I was keen to get photos of the Little Terns but found it rather difficult. They were feeding a little way offshore and they are so small that frame-filling shots were just not available. Still, it was lovely to see them in good numbers. These could be from the Blakeney colony, which we'd visited that very morning.

We walked along the beach, looked in at the new Swarovski hide (a huge brood of Shelducklings visible from here) and eventually reached the path back inland, past Arnold's Marsh.

A nice pair of Gadwalls, still in frisky mating mode by the looks of things although it's getting a bit late in the year to be starting a brood.

By Arnold's Marsh, a couple of Brown Hares were frisking about.

A view acoss the marshes from the south-eastern corner. It was about 6pm by now, still plenty of light but the shadows were beginning to grow. We followed the path back towards the visitor centre, calling in at the last of the hides on the way.

From this hide, another treat - a female Pochard with an impressive brood of eight half-grown ducklings. She led them right up to the hide, over a grassy ridge into the ditch in front of us, and then back onto the grassy ridge where the whole family settled down to preen and doze.

Most of the babies sat down out of view among long vegetation but this one gave us a good look. Cute little thing.

Last pic of the day - a pleasingly sunlit Avocet, looking for someone or something to attack.

Our second Cley visit was on the Thursday evening - we'd spent most of the daytime in Norwich. We just walked to the sea and back. Weather was hazy sunshine and windyness, and most of the photos were too dark/noisy to be any good, but here are a few.

A Common Tern. We didn't see loads of these, the Sandwich Terns and Littles totally outnumbered them.

While Rob was photographing terns on the beach, I sat on the bench overlooking Arnold's Marsh, watching Avocets, Redshanks, two distant Brent Geese and an equally distant Spoonbill, and passing gulls and terns. I was really hoping for a Barn Owl but it was not to be - every white or whitish bird that hoved into view was a gull, a tern, an Avocet or one of these.

Biggest surprise of the day, and perhaps the week, were these two male Goldeneyes, flying in off the sea. Of course, not being a local I don't know how unusual this is for June, maybe it's not unusual at all...

Weather - grey, place - Titchwell

The worst weather day of our week away was the Monday, and we opted to go to RSPB Titchwell so we could take refuge in the hides if necessary. By the time we arrived, though, it had stopped raining, though it remained gloomy and windy the rest of the day.

We started off in the Fen hide, looking out over a small pool and miles of reedbed beyond. From here we could hear a tantalisingly close Cuckoo, and see at least three different Marsh Harriers getting whipped around by the wind. None really came close enough for photos. Then another big brown thing lifted off miles away and I do include a photo of it because it's the one and only Bittern we saw this week.

And onwards, towards the Island hide which overlooks the fresh marsh. Out on the water were plenty of Avocets, including good numbers of part-grown chicks, plus Shelducks and other wildfowl. Numerous Swifts were hawking low over the water, accompanied by a few hirundines.

We'd forgotten to check the sightings board on the way through. If we had, I guess we'd have known there was a Spoonbill around, and wouldn't have been so surprised when it flew quite low overhead while we were on the trail watching House Martins over the fresh marsh.

Rob and I spent a while standing here, trying to get shots of the House Martins. They were being relatively predictable here, flying low over the water into the wind in the direction of the sea, then flipping around and getting blown back landwards before turning and repeating the process. So getting the camera on them as they battled into the wind wasn't all that difficult, but persuading the lens to focus on the small bird rather than the water was more of a challenge.

On the salt lagoon, another unexpected treat, a rather scruffy first-summer Little Gull which was being pushed around by the Black-headed Gulls, not allowed to rest very long in any one spot.

We reached the wonderful beach, where it was low tide, and walked towards the shore, carefully choosing a path that didn't take us anywhere near the groups of feeding waders.

I was busy explaining to Rob why we had to give the waders a very wide berth when four of them flew over and landed almost at our feet - three Turnstones (two in fantastic summer plumage) and a Sanderling. They started pottering about nearby - here's one of the Turnstones...

 ... and here's the Sanderling.

We stayed well back from the other waders but had a couple of flybys, including this Bar-tailed Godwit and a few small groups of Knots.

It was really dark and grey by now. We walked back, noting the Little Gull again, Shovelers and Tufties on the fresh marsh, and the odd Reed Warbler. Rob also saw a Weasel skitter across the path - I missed it, and it didn't respond to my mouse impressions.

At the feeding station by the visitor centre, we witnessed a fierce battle between two Woodpigeons - my attempts to capture this on camera consist of a series of frantic grey blurs (shutter speeds were down to 1/30th sec because of no light). I did manage to steady the lens enough for a sort-of clear photo of this Jay on a feeder.

Double dragon delight in Norfolk

We got back from our dragon-finding week in Norfolk yesterday. It was a week of not-great weather but on our first day we got lucky with a warm, sunny morning. This was enough (just) to enable us to find our two target dragonfly species - Norfolk Hawker and Scarce Chaser - at RSPB Strumpshaw Fen in the Broads.

The dragons didn't make it easy for us, though. On advice at the Strumpshaw visitor centre, we headed for the Meadow trail - a path through lovely long grass alongside some straight-cut, well-vegetated ditches. There were dragons here aplenty - but they were all Four-spotted Chasers. This is Rob's pic, so I can say how much I love it (a lot) without self-consciousness.

Looking harder, we began to pick up a few Hairy Hawkers, nipping along near the water and dodging the chasers' territorial attacks. But no NHs or SCs. After walking the trail back and forth three times I was getting a bit overheated so retreated just off the trail into a wooded area to chill out, and it was here that I spotted another chaser.

I quickly realised it was not a Four-spot. It lacked the spots halfway along the wing edge but instead had an extra dark blob on each wingtip, at right angles to the pterostigma. Its abdomen was not grey-green but a very pleasant honey colour. It was a female Scarce Chaser, and proved to be an amazingly obliging little model. Occasionally it nipped off after some prey but always returned to its perch. It was still on its stick when I left it there and went to find Rob.

He and I were on our way back to the Scarce Chaser when I noticed a hawker over the ditch that looked bigger and browner than the Hairys. A look through the binoculars confirmed it was our most important target, a Norfolk Hawker. It was cruising elegantly up and down a short stretch of ditch, sometimes fast, sometimes slow, often being intercepted by a Four-spot. Using my 300mm lens, Rob grabbed a great sequence of in-flight shots.

The hawker eventually settled, though it picked a very unhelpful spot from a photography point of view. At least this shot shows one of its key features, that great green apple of an eye. It received some gentle mobbing from the damselflies while it rested. Clouds were starting to close in at this point but that was fine by us.

Later in the week we had another good Odonata session at Catfield Fen (a Butterfly Conservation reserve), though we didn't see any more NHs or SCs. We were actually in search of RSPB Sutton Fen, and after a long drive down progressively smaller and rougher roads were surprised but perfectly happy to end up at Catfield Fen. The walk along the 'Rond' pathway gives great views over the fen, which is managed for the benefit of Swallowtail butterflies (we saw four, none photographable though).

Lots of Four-spots here too, many of them teneral, with shiny wings and hesitant flight. I even encouraged one of them to sit on my hand for a moment.

Another 'first' for the year, a striking Black-tailed Skimmer.

There were Hairy Hawkers here too, including this male which actually stuck around long enough for photos.

On the last stretch of path before we returned to the car, we found a sunny clearing with many damselflies in situ, including good numbers of Variables.

A teneral male Variable, his blue bits a dark, dull violet.

A mature male Variable. Very similar to Azure (which was also present) but with broken antehumeral stripes, a wine-glass rather than a U on the first abdominal segment, and more black further down the abdomen.

At some point in the next few days I'll do another blog post (or maybe more than one) about all the other stuff we saw.

A mixed bag of blog

Since the weekend I've carried my camera around a lot on visits to friends and whatnot but not taken many photos. I've picked out a few here, starting with a couple from a visit to Sue's house in East Sutton last Wednesday. Her garden looks fabulous at the moment, with paths cut through long meadowy grass full of flowers. The sun came out in the evening, allowing a window for photography before dinner.

A Red Clover. There was also plenty of Common Vetch, and both of these flowers were pulling in the bees and hoverflies.

The aforementioned Common Vetch, adorned with a female Common Blue. I didn't manage a wings open shot of this one but it was one of the particularly stunning females with a lot of blue, contrasting with the orange crescents on the wing margins (here's one I photographed earlier, to show you what I mean).

I spent last weekend in Hastings, helping to sort stuff out for dad, who's just out of hospital. The weather was photography-unfriendly so I didn't go anywhere further than the back yard with the camera.

The gulls nesting opposite dad's house have hatched a couple of chicks. Cute little fluffbundles, with a beguiling whistle for a call, only a few weeks to go before they are massive gangly adolescents that sound like a donkey with laryngitis.

Rob came down on Saturday and from dad's we went to Rye Harbour for a couple of hours of late-afternoon birding in blowy conditions.

On the way, we stopped at Pett Level, which was (as you'd expect for early June) very quiet - a few Coots dotted about on the water, not a lot in the fields, but some nice close views of Rooks.

I'd hoped to look for Odonata around Castle Water, but conditions at Pett had indicated that would be probably be pointless (too cold, too windy) so we just went to the beach reserve and looked in on the two hides near the far side of the caravan park. The Ternery pool islands are festooned with Black-headed Gulls and their spotty, almost leopard-print chicks.

A Cuckoo dashed over the lake, too fast and distant for any decent photos (as has been the case with every Cuckoo I've seen this year).

Sandwich Terns were going back and forth, as were Common Terns. Not sure how things stand with Little Terns at Rye this year, there are decoys out to entice them down but we didn't see any of the real thing.

Walking back past the new saltmarsh, we saw numerous Skylarks, singing, scrapping and posing.

 The saltmarsh is looking great, lots of mud, shallow water and tucked-away channels. This Ringed Plover seemed to appreciate it. Further out on the marsh were a couple of pairs of Avocets, possibly nesting going by the way they were rising up to chase away other passing birds.

Sunday was a washout. On Monday I had a walk on Ide Hill with Michele but saw next to nothing wildlife-wise, I think I took two photos. Had I brought a sensible lens there'd have been more - the views from up there were wonderful. Rain cut the walk short though, sadly. The sun returned in the evening and Rob and I paid a very brief visit to Sevenoaks Wildlife Reserve, to take yet more test shots with the Sigmonster (at the request of Sigma UK, who seem to be on the verge of agreeing that it needs to go to Japan to have its underexposing problem fixed once and for all).

Still lots of baby Rabbits around. This one was by the raised viewpoint over East Lake, and was completely unworried by our presence, only bobbing away when Rob decided to try and stroke it (and then it only retreated about a metre).

We went to an empty Tyler hide. Little in the way of birds around but it was very peaceful and pleasant, with the sun drifting in and out. The Serengeti is sporting a fine stand of Yellow Flag Irises at the moment.

These six Egyptian goslings were busily cropping the already well-cropped grass on a rather distant island. Out of shot are their parents and a seventh gosling - an impressive family, given that the goslings are already big enough to be out of reach to most predators. There were also two female Mallards with three ducklings each, and a ducklingless trio of Shovelers.

The Mute Swan pair on East Lake have also had a happy event, with three cygnets. If I get the chance before we go away (week in Norfolk from Saturday) I'll look in on the Long Lake and Snipe Bog Lake pairs, both of which were on eggs last time I saw them.