Poppyland Nature: Red-flanked Bluetail at Waxham

Wednesday 13 October 2010

Red-flanked Bluetail at Waxham

Having spent the last week or so relentlessly flogging the patch in the hope of finding a Bluetail of my own, today I finally admitted defeat and decided to go and see the one at Waxham (the fourth one in the county in the last few days) as they are such stunning birds.

A Lapland Bunting flew over as I was parking the car, and on the way along the dunes, two Common Cranes were watched feeding in a field just inland.

The clump where the Bluetail was hanging out was finally located, the misleading directions on the pager not helping one bit, and after a short wait it showed very well and over the next couple of hours regularly came down to some mealworms put down for it giving the assembled crowd stunning views. Despite its once mythical status having long been shattered by the numerous recent occurences, it must still rank as one of the best birds on the British list and still very much a dream find, so I'll never give up flogging the patch in the hope of one of these beauties popping up in front of me!

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 October 2010

Red-flanked Bluetail at Waxham