short eared owl - Thorpe Marshes

short eared owl - Thorpe Marshes

Thursday 7 April 2011

Red Kite & White tailed eagle ..............!!!!!

  I had been seeing that a White tailed eagle had been spotted going around the coast line the last 2days so when Tuesday it came up that it was hanging around warham and then coming in land towards Holt i couldn't let chance slip by ! I finished off work at Taverham and headed off towards Holt , at the same time checking my birdguides for up dates on it's movements . Well after scanning around  in Glavon Valley area to no prevail  i  set of  to Warham where it had reportedly been seen heading towards, along with a few cars, full of eager birders too . Once there we heard that had been seen dropping into woods near Langham and it was a matter of waiting and lots of scanning for it to reappear again! I had got chatting to a birder named Peter from Norwich who suggested we went up to scan from a higher viewpoint , so up to warham greens we went. A Marsh Harrier and a Common Buzzard got the juices flowing but that wasn't  what we were all here for !  A little more scanning and I picked up my first Grey Partridge   for the year along with my first swallow too ! After a sandwich and birding chat I decided to head to holkham for a bit and gave my mobile no.to Peter , as he said he would kindly inform me of any up dates of the Eagle from his pager(what a top bloke)!
 Holkham was quiet until I got my first lifer of the day ..... A Red kite !! (218) A bird I had hoped to pick up this year in Norfolk. I watched it as it hanged around over the wooded area going west . As i smiled to myself while this cracking bird of prey ,Peter rung- ' it's been seen in Bintree` . back in the van and off to Bintree. Well i missed it by a few minutes but managed to catch up with it along with around 20 other birders from Wiveton Downs Car park. All i can remember saying when i first saw it was `WOW ! ` . I mean this really was a huge bird! The wing span was massive and it was dwarfing the mob of crows and the Buzzard  that was hassling it (which eventually helped push it towards us for a while).

A dodgy picture of one cracking White Tailed Eagle ( 219 )
It was a great bird to get but i still wanted even better views so a few of us drove closer to it and pulled up on Bayfield Farm Industrial Park . We were rewarded for our drive , as a couple of lads had it in there scopes perched! I got on it but unfortunately had left me camera in the van so no pictures of this cracking view. It was a great afternoons work-What a bird!

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