Poppyland Nature: Blue-headed Wagtail etc

Tuesday, 19 April 2011

Blue-headed Wagtail etc

Although no new migrants for the spring have been noted over the last few days, there has been notable influxes of both Common Whitethroats and Wheatears all along the patch.

A Ring Ouzel was flushed from the clifftop at East Runton yesterday, and its good to see reasonable numbers of Sand Martins have returned to the cliffs under the golf course as breeding numbers have been low there in recent years.

Other recent highlights include a Grey Wagtail at Felbrigg Lake along with a drake Mandarin, and a Barn Owl was busy hunting the water meadows there during the day hopefully indicative of having young to feed.

A look around the patch today was looking to be uneventful until a check on the cattle field at East Runton revealed a small flock of c15 Yellow Wagtails were present. After a while of watching them I also noticed that a 'Blue-headed' type was also present with them which with a bit of patience came really close as the cattle were doing a circuit of the field. However after checking photos when I returned home I was a bit concerned about the amount of white below the ear coverts and thoughts turned to other subspecies or maybe a hybrid origin, but after later seeking opinions on the net, it probably is a Blue-headed just at the extreme end of their plumage range.

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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Tuesday, 19 April 2011

Blue-headed Wagtail etc