Pink footed goose

A very tame bird that happily wandered in front of the hide at Holkham marsh. We also saw a firecrest but it was too quick for the camera. Thanks to the Met office who forecast sunny spells were were later caught in a squall that came up on us exceedingly quickly, the wind was howling through at about fifty miles per hour and the rain was travelling with the wind rather than falling it seemed - we all finished up rather wet.

Titchwell RSPB

we noticed the reflection of the water in the hide windows, these are set at an angle so that the birds see none of their watchers. The other picture is of a flock of golden plover one of which on the right still had its summer plumage which I thought to be very late in changing to it's drab winter plumage.

Caspian gull & Arctic redpoll

These were two further rarities we saw, both record shots only, both birds were at Titchwell RSPB site.

Western sandpiper

These are some distant record shots of the tiny American wader that has spent several weeks at Cley-next-the-sea and remains there into January. Les & I spent four days up in Norfolk after Christmas with two friends and these and the following images were taken on this trip.

Snettisham extravaganza

Although these two pictures were taken in very poor light, they give an idea of the huge numbers of mainly red knot driven up onto the shingle banks at Snettisham by a 7.4 metre tide. These do not occur very often and Les & I had wanted to see one for ourselves and apart from the weather we were not disappointed. Apart from the pictured knot, there were hundreds od oystercatchers,redshank, spotted redshank, golden plover, ruff, curlew to name a few. We both observed that when a large flock of waders flew just over our heads the temperature seemed to go up by a couple of degrees!
 Another part of this extravaganza are the huge numbers of geese that roost out on the wash mudflats. Early each morning they leave to fly off to the local fields in their skeins of thousands, ominously as the fly over the Sandringham estate they are greeted with gunfire and I can only hope hat their aim is poor, like their outlook on nature and their record for destroying wildlife thoughtlessly.  At least one of the culprits is the Emeritus president of the World wildlife fund and with his record I consider this to be a disgrace.

Robin & Nuthatch

A trip to the lodge produces a pair of Ravens flying over calling and my first redpolls and a siskin of this autumn.The pictures though are of a robin that appeared to be admiring itself in the water and a nuthatch that was searching among the tufts of moss around the drinking pool.

Great grey shrike

A digiscoped record shot