The North Norfolk Coast is one of contrasts. Both wild and desolate yet at the same time a tourist honey pot site, full of wild nature reserves and tea shops and art galleries. Its also one of the best birding sites in the country, regularly attracting rare birds as well as vast numbers of the more commoner ones. Titchwell is the RSPB's reserve for the area, a mix of wetland habitat that's attractive to birds. Its good at all times of the year, but is well known for its migrating waders.
I had some time off work, using up the last of my holiday from the working year, so I headed north of the border into the heart of darkness known as Norfolk. Yesterday I visited the Ouse Washes, see the previous blog page, so a trip further north Titchwell was in order. Usually at this time of year the reserve is good, but this time something was missing. I have been to this reserve several times in winter, and usually I have some good sightings, but not today, today was quiet, and has been for a while according to those at the reserve.
Before I went to Ticthwell, I stopped off at Thornham Harbour, a picturesque little spot with small muddy channels among a large expanse of saltmarsh. Here among some REDSHANK was a wintering GREENSHANK. Although a common enough bird on migration, greenshank are actually rare wintering birds, so this was a decent find. Further in the distance the calls of BRENT GEESE could be heard, with small flocks breaking into the sky, a bird I will see in larger numbers at Titchwell.
And so it was on to Titchwell. The footpath at Titchwell is fairly simple to explain. Basically it is one path down to the beach from the car park and back. On the way it walks through various habitats, succeeding from woodland into reeds, into a freshwater scrape, to tidal lagoons, and eventually the beach and the sea. As a result with every different habitat there is an encounter with different species along the way.
Freshwater Marsh is the focal point of the reserve, a large body of water with some newly created islands. DUCK numbers were low, but on the islands were a large flock of several hundred GOLDEN PLOVER and LAPWING. Five AVOCET were the first of the spring, this bird will start to nest here around March time in small numbers. A flock of BRENT GEESE were present, this black shaded bird is our smallest goose, the size of a mallard, they'll spend the winter here before heading off to Spitsbergan to breed.
After Freshwater Marsh the various tidal lagoons were quiet, the odd scattered WADER, like a REDSHANK, but little else. Tidal Marsh close to the beach had a red head (female) RED BREASTED MERGANSER present, a bird you expect to see on the sea, some distance away, not actually on the reserve, and close to, like this bird.
The path ends at the beach. As you walk over the dune tops you are suddenly blown away by the sheer scale of the beach, at Titchwell its huge. It stretches for miles in every direction. On the water's edge among the mussel beds were large numbers of WADERS. Little white SANDERLING, running like wind up toys along the water line, the slightly bigger and more stout KNOT, and the even more larger and more elegant BAR TAILED GODWIT, among all the other types of birds, such as OYSTERCATCHER, TURNSTONE, DUNLIN and more.
On the sea, everything was quiet. Usually there is a decent assemblage of birds, but today there were just a couple of GOLDENEYE, just over the breakers on the sea. Not a diver, or a grebe, or any other kind of duck to provide any interest, which is a bit worrying.
Close to the visitor centre, before you take the main path to the beach there is a small path that detaches itself from the main footpath and meanders its way through some woodland and areas of fen and reedbed. In the trees were three BULLFINCHES two males and a female, which is a nice find, and maybe a first for me at Titchwell. Further along, Patsy's Pool, usually good for ducks, was practically deserted, which sums up the day for me.
Now I look back on today's birding, it doesn't seem to be as bad as I originally thought. At the time, whilst I was actually at Titchwell, I just felt so underwhelmed, but maybe it wasn't too bad after all. Its just with such good reserves you expect to see rare birds, and when they not there you feel disappointed. I know I'm repeating myself when I say the milder weather is resulting in lower numbers of birds turning up, but it seems to be a real problem for them. Climate change is creating little difference between the seasons and as a result there's less birds, less variety and the world of birds is becoming that much blander.
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