Birding Weekend in Norfolk: Part 1

At the end of my university’s Inter Semester Break my family and I went on holiday to Norfolk for a long weekend from 31/01 to 02/02. As a family, we love coming here, especially Titchwell Marsh. Arriving late on Friday night, we had just one hour of light remaining and had a quick trip to Titchwell to enjoy the Harrier roost and flocks of birds coming to roost on the freshmarsh. There’s something quite enigmatic about Titchwell in the evening as it’s going dark, with skeins of geese passing noisily overhead, harriers circling silently over the reeds and the eerie silhouettes of Curlew and Egrets passing over the saltmarsh in front of the setting sun. For such a short visit, we racked up a healthy list of nearly 50 species including my first Pink-footed and Brent Geese of the year, a huge flock of Golden Plover, with a few Knot, on the freshmarsh and hundreds of waders on the beach at low tide, including Bar-tailed Godwit, Turnstone and Grey Plover. A Red-breasted Merganser was close in on the sea but the identity of 6 ducks slightly further out went undecided– the choppy sea and near-darkness meant that the only features we could note were that they were dark overall with a significant amount of white on 2 of the birds (presumably the drakes?) and an interesting profile, perhaps most likely Long-tailed Duck.

We were staying for two nights at Briarfield’s Hotel – a fantastic birder friendly hotel complete with a sightings-board. I have stayed here many times and highly recommend it, both for its accommodation, brilliant food and its proximity to Titchwell (within walking distance). Arriving in the pitch darkness, there was one more surprise in store – a Woodcock flew South low over the car park just as I was getting out of the car! Norfolk really is birding county!

We started the next day early with a great breakfast at the hotel and went straight for the morning at Titchwell. Stopping as always in the visitor centre to find out what was about, I was delighted to hear that the flooded Meadow Trail had provided good habitat for a small population of Woodcock this winter and even more pleased to know that one had been staked out and could be seen from the path – “38 paces along the Meadow Trail from the junction with the Fen Trail” in fact. As well as this, there were Water Pipit, Spotted Redshank and Barn Owl being seen lately on the reserve, and the usual promise of a potential Bittern. We headed straight for the Woodcock, but despite lots of people looking, it had not been seen for around half an hour, so we moved on, deciding to check back later. 

On arriving at the freshmarsh, I immediately noticed there was a huge reduction in birds from the night before – no sign of the hundreds of Golden Plover that were roosting there last night, nor of any Pink-footed Geese. We did find Knot, Dunlin and a single Goldeneye on the reedbed pool which was my first on the reserve aside from on the sea. The two northerly pools held a huge number of waders and we quickly racked up 12 of the more usual species on our way to the beach. Here we added Sanderling and sheltering behind the dunes from the 40mph winds we managed to find Red-throated Diver, Gannet and Red-breasted Merganser through a shaking scope. If the wind wasn’t enough, occasional gusts would blow a ribbon of sand into our mouths, scopes and eyes – although I’m partial to a bit of sea watching, today certainly wasn’t the day. 

Patsy’s reedbed hosted, as always, an assortment of birds we didn’t see elsewhere on the reserve and here we added Pochard, Tufted Duck, Little Grebe and Mute Swan. I find the divide between where species will go within one reserve very interesting and this is never more obvious than on Patsy’s Reedbed.

Lunch was calling and we were soon back at the visitor centre eating one of the famous Bacon Butties – truly one of the highlights of any visit. Titchwell is one of those reserves that I could spend all day at and not get bored, but being in Norfolk for only one full day, we felt that going back around the reserve at this stage wouldn’t yield much new. So instead we fancied a change of scene and would come back to Titchwell for another evening session.