Hooded Crows, Shorelarks and more

An excellent day around the patch began with a walk along the cliffs at Trimingham in the hope that the Hooded Crow that has been cruising the patch over the last few days might be there, but despite no sign, it was still a very rewarding walk.

Heading west along the clifftop the first Yellow Wagtail of the year was heard calling before I watched it flying off west, a few Swallows and Sand Martins were on the move, as were a good number of Linnets and Meadow Pipits, and a few Wheatears were noted in the fields.

My attention was then drawn to a flock of Woodpigeons scattering all ways from Sidestrand School wood and the glorious sight of a Red Kite came heading towards me low over the fields giving excellent views before heading off over Trimingham village. Unfortunately it was never close enough for a decent pic, but I took a quick record snap of it as it passed by anyway.

I then met another local and as we chatted two House Martins, my first of the spring flew along the cliffs. Whilst discussing the recent Hooded Crow sightings, it was mentioned that one had been seen at East Runton back in Feb, so I stored that bit of info in the memory bank to maybe have a check around the area at some point in the near future.

I then did the Lighthouse & golf course area with the highlights being 5 Wheatears on the turf slope and a Fox sunbathing down on the undercliff.

At this point I nearly decided to head back home to watch the finish of the cricket world cup final and the football, but fortunately decided to act on the info gleaned earlier and check out East Runton instead. Heading past the council offices I noticed a flock of corvids in the field to the north of the road so I quickly dived into the layby and grabbed my bins to have a scan of the flock, and almost immediately upon going through the flock I was looking at a Hooded Crow!

Incredibly inconviniently, at this point a bird scarer went bang and the whole flock dispersed to all points, but after a game of cat and mouse whilst walking the permissive path round the field, when I again had it in flight and then briefly on the deck, it finally settled down in a field some distance away and upon getting it in my scope I was shocked to see that there were actually two!

With Hooded Crows now a very scarce occurrence in the county, maybe they were the same pair that I had found at Trimmingham last autumn which had gone on to winter in the area, and the one that I had seen before Christmas at West Runton also being one of these birds, which also presumably account for the number of recent sightings around the patch too?

I took a few record pics of the two birds, but thanks to the bird scarer continuing to go off they never came very close to get anything better.

I then headed off to West Runton as a flock of 6 Shorelarks had been reported as being there a couple of hours ago. Not really expecting them to still be around I was very pleasantly surprised that my first scan of the field revealed that they were in fact still there and were happily feeding away in the recently sown field. I could only find four, but was more than happy with those, and with the recent Lapland and Snow Buntings in the same field during the last couple of weeks they completed a very welcome treble.

Despite doing their best to hide amongst the new shoots, they did oblige by coming close enough to the path for a few good pics to be taken before moving off into the middle of the field again.

A few Wheatears were also noted in the field, and offshore 7 Sandwich Terns were seen passing by and occasionally diving for fish, and it was nice to hear their calls once again. Overhead the passage of Swallows and Sand Martins continued.

One the way home I decided to call back into East Runton and walked up a track from the other side near to where the Hooded Crows had been and was rewarded with much closer views of one of them feeding amongst a corvid flock. No sign of the other although it could easily just have been out of sight as there is a lot of dead ground in the area.

Hopefully they will continue to hang around the area, maybe even summer, and if they are a pair...?