short eared owl - Thorpe Marshes

short eared owl - Thorpe Marshes

Monday 11 July 2011

Thorpe Marshes & Surlingham

 I left the house at 7 am and looked up to the sky to see the screeching Swifts whiz over the roof tops (im gonna miss these guys when they start heading off soon ) and all of a sudden a Swift tumbled out of my roof tile above!I have read that sometimes they may check a few places out before they sets off on its journey south and hopefully they return to my roof next spring, well wait & see!
 Any way i got to Thorpe Marshes and straight to the viewing area looking across at the scrape and i notice a Mallard family, 7 young in total .Also 3x  Lapwings  on the end of the spit along with 2 x Green Sandpipers!As i carried on scanning the noisy Common Tern which had been going up & down the river moments earlier dropped in and then walked up to a well hidden juvenile & soon after a second juvenile! I was enjoying watching the parent Tern go back & forth with fish to the 2 young Terns along with watching the Green Sandpipers which were  making there way up & down the shingle. The Green Sandpipers were a first for me on this patch and had me thinking that perhaps I miss out by coming down later in the day/ evenings so more early visits I think! As i turned to walk away i heard & then saw 2x Green Woodpeckers  flying across from Whitlingham cp over head to the trees along the railway line, another patch tick for me.
I decided to leave here and head off to Surlingham and meet up with Jim.
 I arrived about 9am & made our way round with Jim pointing out a few Butterfly hot spots along the way. Check out Jims blog to see full list of what was seen but stand out birds were a cracking single Black Tailed Godwit on the lagoon and then a couple of Juvenile Green Woodpeckers along with a pair of Little Owls on the same dead tree( starting to get Owl overload !) A few pictures of the mornings birding.

Great Crested Grebe


Green Sandpiper


2x Juvenile Common Terns


Black Tailed  Godwit


Little Owl


Green Woodpeckers
 Happy Birding,
  Shaky

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