We have found it hard to get out birding over the last few days, but the opportunity came up on Wednesday the 15th and we headed up the A10 to Lakenheath to search for the Tundra Bean Geese that had been seen here for a few days.
From the river bank, we find 3 Great White Egrets and four Whooper Swans, but after walking the length of the bank down to the viewpoint there's no sign of the Bean Geese, only loads of Canada and Greylags.
A walk along the bottom track gets us a couple of year ticks in Bearded Tits and Water Rail.
Heading back we pop back onto the river bank and get lucky when a dredger was going along the river and put the Geese up. The 3 Tundra Geese fly right over our heads and land on the washland behind the river to give us great views of them.
It's off now to the main reason for coming to this area today, a visit to Cockley Cley in the hope of seeing Goshawks, and boy did we see them.
A couple of cars are here when we arrive, but the signs are not good as they had not really had anything and told us that they were heading off and that if the normal happens we will get to see them.
Sure enough within minutes, we see the first Goshawk coming over the trees with 4 Buzzards flying around it, soon we see two of them putting on a display for us.
Five times we see goshawks flying over and then one lands on top of a distant tree and we get great scope views of this truly fantastic bird to watch.
A young fellow named Toby and his mum arrive and we get them onto the bird in the tree and is great to see his excitement at seeing it and for him to be so into it at such a young age of 11. Also seen while here a year tick Woodlark.
On the way home we visited Lynford Arboretum for another try for Hawfinch, but after two hours we give up. Jimmy did pick up the long-awaited Brambling for a tick, this has been annoying him a bit as he missed it when Brian and I got one earlier in the year and he was looking the wrong way and it never hung about.
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| The 3 Tundra Bean Geese at Lakenheath. |
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| Also the Whooper Swans |
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| A long off-view of one of the Goshawks |
On Thursday 16th we popped over to St Andrew's Church in Bramfield for a quick visit and saw a Hawfinch within seconds of arrival.
