Another lifer at Frampton Marsh. ( Black Stork )

With Brian away with his family for the weekend, we think the chance of getting up to Lincolnshire for a lifer, a Black Stork is slim. It had been seen for a couple of days but I didn't fancy the long drive.  The bird was still being seen on Tuesday and a call from Brian telling us to get down to his house as he can take us to Frampton Marsh in the hope of seeing the Stork.  It's late morning and we quickly hit heavy traffic on the roads heading up there, when we get there we are told that the Stork had flown out of sight, so a bad start after the traffic troubles. We decide to walk out from the car park through the avenue of trees to look for the bird ourselves. we keep walking and as we turn a corner some people had got there in cars, pity we didn't know about that beforehand. As we approached the cars a fellow jumped out of his car and tells us the Stork is flying high above some pylons.  We are straight onto it to give us a distant view of another lifer.   The bird heads out of sight so we walk across the center path to the seawall.   Once on the wall, we get 3 more flight views and see the bird land in the field in front of us for a great view, but just as we think we are going to get some good photos the farmer starts calling his heard of cows, and it scares the Stork away and over the trees and out of sight. 

On a walk around the reserve, we pick up a year tick when Jimmy spots a Little Stint, no sign of the Pacific Golden Plover that was a shame.  Never mind we got what we came for so smiles all around on the way home.

Lifer Black Stork

Minsmere and Oare

On the 3rd of August, we set out to have a day's birding at Minsmere. We need to push our year count up to a reasonable number as we have still not been too active with the trips out this year.

It's off to the beach on arrival and we are soon looking over East scrape which is packed with waders. The first tick of the morning comes when we get great views of the White-rumped Sandpiper, which we had hoped would have stayed for another day. Luckily for us, it had. It's distant but we get good scope views of the bird. The birds on the scrape are flushed by a Marsh Harrier and when they settle a Pectoral Sandpiper is found feeding alongside the White-rumped Sandpiper! Spotted Redshank was also seen for a third year tick of the morning.

We moved onto the public hide and found a single juvenile Arctic Tern among the numerous Little and Sandwich Terns.

Then Brian spots a single Little Gull adding another year tick. We spend the remainder of our visit just walking around the reserve enjoying the day.

The Pec & the White-rumped Sandpiper as they flew past.

The Spotted-Redshank

The next day a Hoopoe had spent the day at Oare Marshes. So we headed there this morning hoping it had stayed overnight. We set off to look for the returning Bonaparte's Gull that we have had the pleasure to see for a few years now and pick it out without too much trouble for a good year tick. Now a long walk for the Hoopoe, a small group had gathered but the bird had not been seen. After a couple of hours, we along with most of the others give up and head back towards the slipway picking out a couple of Whinchats on the way. We spend the next few hours just birding the site. Sadly there was still far too much water on the flood to attract any smaller waders.

The returning Bonaparte's