Norfolk And AOS Visit,Saturday 07.01.2017.

With the kind invite from Tim and the other members of the AOS who i know,namely Rich Sargeant and Mark Easterbrook,Tim and myself headed for Norfolk at the unearthly hour of 04.15.
 On the journey along the A15 a roadside Barn Owl was my first sighting of the year of this lovely species.
 As we neared our first destination of Hunstanton,a quick drive around Wolferton saw us seeing target no.1....Woodcock,as we got superb views in the car headlights of 1 bird as it fed along one of the grass verges before disappearing into the undergrowth.
 After a very nice brekkie in Tesco's in Hunstanton and meeting some more members of the AOS,it was onto the next site,Thornham Creek,picking Mark and Debs up along the way.
 To be fair,the weather was garbage on arrival,overcast and slightly misty,but we made the best of things.Highlights here included 25 Twite,which included a CR bird no doubt from the Pennines ringing project,a single Marsh Harrier and a lovely Spotted Redshank which was watched feeding in the creek.
 The next site we headed for was a personal fave and one where i have always had a good visits to in the past,Titchwell RSPB.
 After parking up we made our way along the footpath towards the sea,with some excellent views of 2 Water Rail to start with feeding alongside the path.
 Further on and on the freshmarsh,the best sightings went to another Spotted Redshank,at least 5 Pintail including some fine Drakes and at least 4 different Marsh Harriers.
 Eventually we made it to the beach and began to look on the sea,but it was far from easy in the misty conditions,but i managed to see at least 25 Long-tailed Duck,6 Velvet Scoter,3 Eider and 6 Red-breasted Mergs in amongst the 500+ strong flock of Common Scoters.This is the largest flock of Long-tailed Duck i have seen since visiting the north of Scotland and were a great sight to witness along with the Velvets.
 We then retraced our footsteps back to the visitor centre to look on the reserve bird feeders and we eventually managed to find a female Brambling and at least 3 cracking Mealie Redpolls a great way to end our visit to this cracking site.
 We then decided to head towards Holkham,when we chanced upon a roadside flock of Dark-bellied Brent Geese and commented that i had seen Black Brant along here in the past.A quick scan of the flock and Mark picked out a fine adult Black Brant,it stuck out like a sore thumb and i could easily pick it out with Bins.Also here included a small flock of 40 Pink-footed Geese,some nice Grey Partridges and the noisy local Egyptian Geese.
 A chance sighting passing by overhead,was an adult Med Gull heading for the coast with other mixed gulls.
 Our final destination was the fantastic Holkham and after paying for our parking we made our way out to the 'Gap' to look for the wintering Shorelark flock.
 As we arrived,there they where and after a while they flew closer to us allowing some nice scope views,after several attempts at counting them as they were very active we decided there were a respectable flock of 34 birds.These birds are always great to see,long gone are the days when they used to winter in flocks of 100's.
 We then looked from the Joe Jordan hide after enjoying our views of the lovely Larks and a distant white shape in the mist eventually gave itself up to be a Great-white Egret,probably the bird reported earlier on Birdguides as being present here.This was a nice added bonus to the days sightings and we were doing brilliantly considering the crap weather conditions.
 Our final viewpoint on this brilliant reserve was from the Washington hide,this is a raised hide on stilts overlooking the freshmarsh and surrounding area.From here a good sized flock of geese included at least 50 Eurasian White-fronts in amongst the Pinks,a great sight to see and a nice way to end our days sightings to this great area for birding.All in all we managed 103 species which was pretty respectable considering the weather and a good start to the birding year for me.
 After dropping Mark and Debs at their B&B,Tim and myself made the long journey back north after a great day out on the north Norfolk coast.

I have just received ringing details back from Jamie Dunning,that the CR Twite we saw at Thornham was ringed as a juvenile on 13.09.2016. at Dove Holes in Derbyshire.Interesting stuff and just goes to show the value of ringing birds to study migration patterns etc.