One swallow does not a Summer make..

..especially if that swallow happens to be in December!! Archetypical of long hot Summer days drifting over lush river meadows, the swallow departs our shores in late Summer. To see one after October is rare. To see one in December is almost, but not totally, unheard of. For that swallow to be not our common barn swallow but the much rarer red-rumped version gets the pulse racing a bit. When one was reported in Norfolk at Cley on Wednesday afternoon it created a bit of a buzz. I have seen them abroad but not in this country. They are near the top of my bogey bird list as well, having missed one by a minute at Cley a couple of years ago. I got to the beach car park literally as it flew over my car without me realising what the people were looking at!!! It kept going never to be seen again. To make this one more exciting it was seen going to roost in the small clump of trees behind the East bank car park. With a cloudy, mild night it looked good that it might stay so another early morning dash was in order. A very early night and a 4.15 alarm got me on the road at 4.45 and in the car park by just before 7.20. Surprisingly I was the only one there although to be fair it was barely light. I had a quick coffee and scanned the top of the wood. Nothing moving though there was a constant stream of geese, both pink-footed and brent, coming up off their roosts and flying off to feed in the fields.

This was the clump of trees though and soon another birder had joined me as we stared up at it. Fortunately we didn't have to wait too long. A small bird suddenly appeared skimming over the road and the trees. Definitely a swallow though you couldn't make out much more than that. As there are no other swallows around it had to be the red-rumped.

Unfortunately though the light instead of getting as dawn broke was getting worse. The photo above was when the sun gave a lovely red hue to the sky before the clouds quickly rolled in.

 After that it never really got light till I left after 9. The swallow was feeding over the trees, as you can see in the top shot. It was really hard to capture as it moved so fast and with the poor light I was pushing the ISO up to silly numbers to get anywhere near 1/125 of a second.

This is the best of a very poor bunch though. You can see the bits on it which allow you to i.d. it as a red-rumped version. Although a basic swallow in shape it has a clear white rump with a touch of red before it forks out. It also has that white neck band. What you can't see it the jazz of the bird which seemed more like a martin than a swallow.

At one point it had the fright of its life as a sparrow hawk came up out of the wood and very nearly grabbed it. As I was only one of three birders on site at the time it would have been a bad day both for the swallow and the assorted twitchers no doubt on their way. It stayed all day and roosted overnight again, being seen the following day in the same place.
On the way back I stopped off at Cockley Cley where Ashley Banwell in doing sterling work supporting the willow tit population there. There were loads of birds on the feeder in the woods and I got a willow tit calling once or twice but couldn't get a decent photo.

This is one of the many marsh tits, themselves not a common bird anymore, which were also feasting on the sunflower seeds.
A nice bonus of a day. I had supposed there would be no more lifers this year so that was a surprise. Still three weeks to go though so not impossible there might be a rare thrush out there somewhere!!