Lamsdell Bird Ringing and Wildlife Blog: North Norfolk

Sunday 30 January 2011

North Norfolk - 29 Jan 2011

A weekend visit to North Norfolk, 50/50 birding and ringing, utilising the Premier Inn at Kings Lynn, found us on the Saturday initially visiting Holkham Bay. The first surprise was the new parking machines in Lady's Ann Drive and the fees. How sad even visiting the countryside has the commercial cost of visiting a High Street or station car park. But then the High Street would not have had the White-fronts and Pink-foots alongside the track.

Holkham bay

Just out there, within the dunes were 7 Shore Larks and 5 Snow Buntings. Then off to the Holkham tea shop for breakfast!

Next drop in was Burnham Overy which provided the first sighting in some years of Rough-legged Buzzard with 2, eventually seen nicely over the nearby wood, with a bit of inter-action between the two birds. 4 Barn Owls were quartering the fields. By the end of the day 7 were seen out in the middle of the day.

Burnham Overy fields with Holkham Meals (west) behind

Injured Brent Goose - leg injury

Next call - via the cafe in Brancaster was a short visit toThornham for the Northern Harrier, which was not in sight, so we tried Titchwell, and as we walked down the track, a Woodcock went over and once we were looking over the open fields towards Thornham the Harrier was quartering the fields and seen a couple of times during the two or so hours at Titchwell. The sea held what was probably nearly 2000 Scoter of which one Velvet was picked up in flight. Otherwise the sea was relatively quiet and the Twite were not evident during our visit.

Thornham

About us

Chris and Denise Lamsdell

We have both been birders for about 40 years based in South Bucks near the West London reservoir complexes.

Since September 2021 we have been based in North Norfolk. We have done our bit of twitching in the past, but with other priorities this has become a much reduced activity with a preference for seeing new birds where ever our travels take us.

We both have been ringing since 2005. Our local group was the Runnymede RG while based in Buckinghamshire. Since moving to Norfolk we have started a new group called The Iceni Bird Monitoring Group, aimed at increasing public engagement through colour ringing projects on Black-headed Gull, Turnstone and Lapwing. We ring at several sites including Sculthorpe Moor, Sandringham Estate, Deepdale Farm and also monitor bird populations for the Norfolk Rivers Trust. We do ringing at home and support with foreign projects when opportunities allow. Chris also has an interest in Butterflies and Dragonflies and contains his limited photographic skill to them.