Poppyland Nature: Wryneck and Redstarts continue to delight

Thursday 9 September 2010

Wryneck and Redstarts continue to delight

A check of the reservoir today showed that there was still up to 6 Redstarts present, but initially no sign of the Wryneck.

With the Redstarts posing so well I couldn't resist taking a few pictures as I think they are really smart looking birds, and something we'd go really mad about if they were a 'rare sibe'. There was a particulary stunning male present, which seemed to be having a lot of fun chasing around the other birds!

Whilst in the middle of photographing one of the Redstarts, I noticed a movement on the ground in the back of my field of view. Refocusing the scope to see what it was, I was delighted to see that it was the Wryneck busily feeding away on the ground about 20 foot away, but mostly concealed amongst the grass and other vegetation. It was then seen to fly up into the hedge and then every 20 minutes or so drop back onto the bank for a few minutes before going back up into cover.

After a lot of patient waiting it finally popped up in full view a couple of times, and I managed to quickly get a few pics of it as it did so, with the best two reproduced below.

Whilst waiting for the Wryneck to reappear, I heard a wooshing sound of fast wing beats above me and upon looking up saw a Hobby circling round, and on looking at it through my bins saw that it had obviously just taken one of the local hirundines as it was happily plucking it as it circled around before drifting off towards some nearby trees.

The Little Grebe was still present but as usual spent most of its time hiding, only very occasionally venturing out into the open water.

A late afternoon visit to West Runton revealed that there were still a couple of Redstarts there, along with a few Wheatears, and the regular adult Mediterranean Gull was around the car park and perching on its favourite post.

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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Thursday 9 September 2010

Wryneck and Redstarts continue to delight