Cley, Norfolk, 30/08/99
Still suffering from food poisoning, my girlfriend Vicky, mate Philip and me headed to the North Norfolk coast for some birding. Like Kent the previous week, waders were much in evidence. On Cley's North Scrape, I counted 97 Curlew Sandpipers, over 30 Little Stints, 15 Greenshanks, 2 Spotted Redshanks and 50 Black-tailed Godwits, an amazing spectacle. I have never seen that number of Curlew Sands and Little Stints at one time. Besides the waders, there were two Spoonbills, a regular sight at Cley these days. Over the sea we had a solitary Arctic Skua among Sandwich, Common and Little Terns.
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Blakeney and Holme Dunes, 05/09/99
A week later and we were back in Norfolk again and it was a bit of a disaster birding wise. Vicky and me trudged to the end of Blakeney Point; seven miles of shingle and sand and we saw very little. To make matters worse, I had convinced Vicky that we could get a drink and a cake at the cafe at the end so we didn't need to take any refreshments with us - big, BIG mistake! The cafe was shut. So we trudged back, hungry and desperately thirsty. I bought Vicky a sandwich and drink from the beach cafe back at Cley, which was really pretty grim - cheap white bread with plastic red Leicester cheese - but boy did we appreciate it!
The only bird of note we had seen all day was a juvenile Merlin, which showed well perched on one of he dunes. Otherwise, no migrants were seen at all.
We decided to cut our losses and head for home. On the way back, for some reason I decided to ring birdline when we got to Fakenham. The news was that an Arctic Warbler had been found at Holme Dunes! This was a lifer for me but I was already in Vicky's bad books. Nevertheless, I somehow managed to persuade Vicky to turn the car back coastwards and off we went. At Holme, we bumped into Dunc Poyser, his girlfriend Ange and Mark Hawkes, who had not yet seen the bird. The warbler was keeping to thick cover in the dune slacks to the west of the firs and was proving to be very elusive. Quite a crowd was present including some birders who had had good views earlier on. After a while, I saw some movement and it was a small pale warbler- this was the Arctic Warbler. It was mostly hidden in the foliage and moving quickly, but I managed to see rather dull green upperparts, a long whitish supercilium and white underparts. I didn't see any detail really, no wingbar and no key features particularly. It did seem a bit bulkier than the three Greenish Warbler I'd seen to date and was a little more deliberate in its movements, not so restlessly active. Sadly, as time went on the bird failed to show again and we decided to quit. Inconclusive views of a pre-identified bird, all a bit disappointing really and I couldn't tick it sadly. Nevermind...
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