Poppyland Nature: Bunting Bonanza and more migrants too

Monday, 21 March 2011

Bunting Bonanza and more migrants too

A phone call from my Dad this morning alerted me to the fact that he had found a Lapland Bunting in the cliff-top field at West Runton. We had both been checking there regularly for one, especially as there were large numbers just along the coast at Webourne, so it was nice to know that our persistence with looking had finally paid off. Fortunately it was still there when I arrived and it gave excellent views as it fed along the field edge, and was in really smart plumage.

A Black Redstart briefly alighted on the fence along the cliff edge before vanishing, and then as I walked further east to check the rest of the fields I was delighted as three Snow Buntings flew along the field in front of me and began feeding in the ploughed field. After a short while they joined up with the Lapland Bunting and it was excellent to see them feeding side by side, before something flushed everything up from the field and they were lost to view.

Unfortuately at this point my camera decided to develop a terminal problem with completely of its own accord it zooming out to full magnification and jamming in this position and consequently preventing any other button on it from working so I was far from happy! It might be repairable, but as the lens is quite scratched now and the sensor being tempermental especially on the macro setting, its probably time to look at a new one.

Back in the car park a male Wheatear, the first of the year, was briefly seen on the large grassy area before vanishing as everything scattered revealing a Peregrine slowly moving west.

A check of the golf course revealed a number of Chiffchaffs singing in the wood and the undercliff, and other birds noted moving included a few Siskins, alba Wagtails and Starlings.

I then decided to do a bit of raptor watching from Incleborough, with the added bonus of some Cranes hopefully moving east along the coast as per the pager. Unfortunately the Cranes moved through unseen, probably too far inland to see, but a very distant Red Kite more than made up for that. It was undoubtedly the same bird that was seen over Cley reserve then heading SSE over Walsey, and I would guess it was over Kelling Heath when I picked it up before it dropped below the tree line on the Holt-Cromer ridge never to rematerialise.

Different people have different rules when it comes to counting birds for a specific area, for me its as long as I'm on the patch I count it for the patch irrespective of whether the bird is actually outside the boundary, after all its just a bit of fun, and I'm sure I'll have one over the patch in the near future anyway if past years are anything to go by.

A scan of the field at West Runton from the top of Incleborough revealed that there was now two Lapland Buntings in the field, so after I'd finished raptor watching, a few local Common Buzzards and Sparrowhawks were also seen, I went back down to the beach car park for a closer view of them before heading home after a really excellent day.

My Patch

My patch covers roughly a 10 mile stretch along the north Norfolk coast, from Beeston in the west along to Trimingham in the east, plus a small area inland including Felbrigg Park, Roughton and Northrepps, although the vast majority of my time is spent concentrating on the area from West Runton along to Overstrand.
The main habitats of the area are the coastal bushes and scrub which attract migrants in spring and autumn, a few clifftop woods and fields, the park & lake at Felbrigg, rocky and sandy beaches, and the cliffs and sea which both present great potential for observing coastal passage.

My Photos

The bird photos on here are all digiscoped using a Panasonic Lumix TZ3 compact camera and a Kowa TSN 824 scope. I use a 50x wide angle lens on the scope with no zoom on the camera which seems to go against all the 'expert' advice you read on forums etc, but it works for me and I'm pleased with the results. Additionally I also just hold the camera in place by hand rather than use any adapters to fix it in place, and apart from altering exposure levels, I just go with the automatic levels on the camera so it is really just a case of point and shoot.
The Butterfly and Dragonfly pictures are taken with the camera alone using its macro setting and again mostly using no zoom, which naturally requires a lot of careful stalking of the subject to get close enough to get the quality of picture that I desire.

Poppyland

In 1883 the London based playwright, poet and theatre critic, Clement Scott, visited Cromer as a travel writer for the Daily Telegraph taking advantage of the newly opened railway to the town. On arrival he walked east along the coast to seek accommodation and fell in love with the idyllic villages of Overstrand and Sidestrand and the solitude they presented away from the nearby town. With fields of poppies carpeting the clifftops, he christened the area 'Poppyland' and subsequently wrote a series of articles about his visit in the Telegraph. These were later published as the Poppyland Papers, and his writings made the area probably the best known holiday destination in the country with many victorians visiting the area to enjoy its delights, and the most wealthy of them having houses built in the area, with Overstrand soon becoming known as 'The village of millionaires'. The term Poppyland has stuck ever since, and although it originally just referred to the Overstrand and Sidestrand area, the extension of the railway line to Sheringham and Mundesley, known as the Poppy Line, led to that whole stretch of coast becoming known as Poppyland.

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Monday, 21 March 2011

Bunting Bonanza and more migrants too