Enjoying the sunshine

After a brief pulse of nice birds to go and see - ortolan bunting, Yankee tern, pied flycatcher - Autumn seems to gone off the boil a little bit. I did have the opportunity of another lifer, in the form of a greenish warbler at Burnham Overy. By the time I got there the following day though it had gone leaving me and other assorted twitchers to enjoy the early autumn sunshine and watch a bush with nothing it. It was a lovely morning after all!

Still, the north Norfolk coast will always give you something to keep you occupied so I eventually ended up at Titchwell. There was nothing out of the ordinary there but with good light the freshmarsh did supply a number of waders close to the hides.

 There was a good mix just in front of us, but the most numerous were ruff. I would guess 40 or 50 over the whole area.

In their non-breeding plumage they can be confusing as they vary a lot in size and colouration but the short beak, yellowish legs, white-belly and generally quite well-marked backs make them stand out. It can be tricky though as the two below show, the lower one is a juvenile.

Most of the time they were feeding happily but occasionally there was a bit of a falling out between them,when they were preening in a small stream on the marsh.

The winner though got to have a lovely time cleaning up their often quite muddy feathers.

Apart from the ruff, the other star wader was a pair of curlew sandpipers. These occur in the UK on migration in small numbers mainly on the east coast in Autumn. They are like dunlin but a bit larger and with a much longer beak. There were dunlin around but they seemed to keep separate most of the time.

You can seem most of the salient features above - the bold eye-stripe, the long, down curved bill, strongly marked back and perhaps a touch of pink of the breast from their breeding plumage (or am I imagining that!).
Of course, avocets are another star bird of the coast here and a few came close to the hide, sweeping the water with their upcurved bills.

Last of the waders to feature were lapwings whose plumage shone brightly in the afternoon sunshine. They are often an overlooked bird as they can be quite distant but get them close and they have to be one of our most attractive birds.

So, apart from waders what else kept me occupied. Well, there was a slightly scruffy shelduck feeding away on the mud. It must be packed with food bearing in mind how many birds were making good on it.

One for the purists was a white wagtail. This is the nominate race of our pied wagtails, which are considered a sub-species by some authorities (LGRE has them a separate species not just a race which gives you an extra tick on the 400 club list!). They are not white, but do show a very clear difference from our birds, with a pale back sharply demarcated from their black bib and cap.

Probably the star though occurred just as I was thinking about packing up and going. All the birds on the marsh lifted off, normally a sign of a raptor around.

You suddenly realised that as well as waders there were hundreds of starlings feeing in the grassy margins, wheeling around in a mini murmuration. The cause of this commotion came bowling across the sky - a peregrine falcon.

It made two or three stoops into the flocks and we did see it knock one dunlin out of the sky and onto the marsh where the small bird lay twitching. There were too many people on the bank though for the falcon to come down and take it so it circled around a few times before heading off.

Although I missed and lifers and didn't even get  year tick it was a thoroughly enjoyable afternoon  in the hide. Good birds, good light and always something to watch. You can see why Titchwell is such a magnet for the crowds all year round.