Poppyland Nature: Titchwell Chiffchaff

Wednesday, 13 April 2011

Titchwell Chiffchaff

Compared to the previous few days, the last week has been a relatively quiet affair on the patch with no new migrants for the year noted, although there has been a notable arrival of Willow Warblers and Blackcaps plus the odd Wheatear and good numbers of hirundines moving through.

On the Butterfly front, the first Orange-tips and Holly Blues have been noted.

The most frustrating episode of the past week has to be whilst on a visit to Titchwell yesterday when a chiffchaff sp. was heard singing some way infront along the meadow trail. My initial thought was surely thats going to be an Iberian but before I could get near to where the song was coming from it annoyingly stopped singing. With no further sound of it and managing to convince myself that I wasn't entirely sure if I could actually recall what Iberian sounded like anyway plus being aware that 'mixed singers' had been recorded on a number of occasions I put it down to the latter, although I did mention its presence to another birder I spoke to along the path. With a brief listen on the way back drawing a blank and time pressing I left it at that and with it mostly forgotten I stupidly failed to check the song when I got home.

Anyway of course one of the first messages that came up on the pager this morning was 'Iberian Chiffchaff @ Titchwell - singing on the meadow trail'!!! Checking sound recordings on the web tonight the song heard matches those of recordings of apparent vagrant Iberians so I'm happy with that, but just annoyed that I didn't trust my instincts a bit more - lesson learnt for the future!

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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Wednesday, 13 April 2011

Titchwell Chiffchaff