short eared owl - Thorpe Marshes

short eared owl - Thorpe Marshes

Saturday 17 February 2018

Janaurys Patch Sightings.......


  Will January started off cold and wet , with a lot of high water levels on the River Yare which meant a lot of flooding, particularly on the Marsh. Also a few light snow showers and couple of hard frosts but that said we escaped the worse of it ( up north had it quite bad with heavy snow falls).


Marsh and footpaths flooded


As usual the Broad was where the action was......
Shovelers counts of 30 on the 8th and around 16 on the 23rd with Pochard up to 46 on the 8th but dropping off to 19 by end of month.
Teal numbers as usual hard to count but around 37 on the 23rd was nice.
Tufted duck was around 19 but up to 34 on the 23rd. Gadwall were in highest numbers though with 45 at start of month and on 23rd up to 62 .
Also of note was 3x Little Grebes present on each visits and Lapwings seen on the 8th and 23rd, a count of 9 on the latter.
Highest counts of Coot were on the 8th of 26 and 2x Common Snipe were seen on the 8th.
A notable count of 14x  Mallards were seen on the 8th which was nice . Although common on Thorpe River Green just further along River never that many seen on the Broad during the day ( numbers do arrive on to marsh at dusk though )
Also 18 x Herring Gulls was of note ,gathered on the West beach of broad on the 23rd.
Great Crested Grebes as always present, an Adult bird and what looks to be a 1st Winter bird seen on every visit too.
Nice to see hear and see the Grey Wagtails still present with 2 birds seen on the 8th and 3 on the 23rd.


Grey Wagtail

The month ended cold but with sunny days and some picturesque moments given.  A added bonus was my beloved West Ham United went the Month unbeaten and up to 11th in the league (started the month in relegation position) so Moyes seems to be sorting it out a bit!
Happy birding
Ricky ⚒

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