Anne's Journal

Thursday September 26 A scattering of Yellow-browed Warblers, brought in by the easterlies, was a harbinger of Autumn birding.  The moths likewise. A paltry catch of only 24 moths of 7 species in two traps was made delightful by the single Dark Crimson Underwing.. One of the truly Waw moths. The Grey Dagger caterpillar Pam found in the Hawthorn she cut as food for a different cat, has now pupated'   Spinning in progress It's likely to be next spring at the earliest before a moth appears. We went to Titchwell yesterday (Weds) to see a micro David N had brought for us to see. It was trapped in South Norfolk and -  potentially - is a first for the UK. A Phycitodes lacteela. David is an excellent provider of 'good' moths for the group, saying that he enjoys doing so. Thank you. We went on to Holme reserve car park where we met Sue and Ian, ate our meal and called in to Brancaster Staithe.  The high tide was beginning to ebb. Although many boats have already been beached...

 Monday September 16 Blue Sky, warmth, birds and a chance for photography. What could be better.  I can immediately think of a few other enhancements - but I have to be realistic. As planned, we made our way directly to Snettisham after an early start, for us. We left soon after eight a.m., encountering school run traffic in North Walsham with nothing much elsewhere. We knew that it was well past high tide so expected the vast stretch of brown, rippled, muddy sand, interspersed with small pools, which greeted us. A flock of 150 Golden Plover in a long straggle-line, very well camouflaged, just one with a black belly. Curlew, one well ringed, two on each leg, one flag a bright yellow. Pam photographed it using my camera, but only one set of numbers was discernible. Ringed Plover, Redshank, Knot and Bar-tailed Godwit. To our delight, a young Stonechat flew in, landing on a trackside twiggy branch.  The end pit held dozens of Greylag, Cormorants, eight Spoonbills and several...

 Sunday September 15 So long since I posted. Why? A combination of circumstances. No birding to report and - mainly - Google Blogger messing me about re passwords. I've now fixed the latter and hope to rectify the former in the near future. In the meantime. Apart from a plethora of Large Yellow Underwings and Setaceous Hebrew Characters, moth-ing has been quiet. Until the excitement of Pam finding a Clifden Nonpareil on the wall above a trap. We have now been catching one annually for the last five or so years, yet it is still a supreme joy to find one in the garden, big, beautiful, and in pristine condition. They must be breeding locally.   This is how it looked before its transfer into a larger box to take to the Cley session. It managed to flutter around and remove a lot of scales, unfortunately. My plans for a natural background photo were shelved. Still lovely......and it gave a lot of people pleasure. One visiting moth-er had never seen one before. A genuine WAW moth. We...

 Friday August 30 My original bird alert pager was set to make a very loud siren sound when a rare bird was found. Friend Giles, who wasn't much of a techy didn't know how to re-set it. His wife Judy, so startled one day whilst driving the car, threatened to put it in a bucket of water the next time it made that noise. I could do with a similar noise for our Silvery Gem WhatsApp group. Fortunately, I looked at the most recent messages in good time. Marcus Nash had trapped a Porter's Rustic which he would take to Cley VC at 2.00 this afternoon. Rare immigrant. A rather drab and easily overlooked species. The first British record was in 1978 in Cornwall. Larva has not been recorded in Britain, on the continent it has been recorded feeding on various herbaceous plants. First Norfolk record 24th August 2008 at Salthouse. (Michael Williams, Derbyshire), Colney Pits, Norwich in 2021 (D. Holman, C. Stean) and Eccles in 2023 (N. Bowman) Norfolk Moths   It really did live up (o...

 Monday August 26 Bank Holiday weekends in North Norfolk, coinciding with very high tides at Snettisham, are not an attractive combination. We avoided the main crowds by taking the inland route, driving directly to Snettisham Reserve. The RSPB's very popular 'Snettisham Spectaculars' had taken place on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Parking places need to be booked, and birders come from far and wide.  Our first sight of the water is when we crest the hill leading out of the chalet park, always a much anticipated view. Today's high tide was 'only' 6.3, low after the previous three days' 7 metres plus. At 7 metres the water covers the wash entirely so that the hundreds of thousands of birds are forced to find somewhere else to roost. Many of them crowding the islands and banks of the reserve pits. To-day, the vast majority were massed on the northern shore of the Wash, in Lincolnshire.   Seeing empty, gently lapping water, tufts of Samphire showing through, we...

 Wednesday July 20 At last.  Yesterday, Thomas, our computer man, responded  He'd never come across Error 403 before nor did he know how to fix it. Great. He spent half an hour or so trying all sorts of stuff, failing each time. He left, scratching his head, physically and metaphorically, saying that he'd have a think and let me know.  After he'd gone, something had triggered an idea in my brain. I logged in to Google, looked at all my addresses and passwords, checked them and renewed the password for Blogger. Bingo. The loading photos link worked..... but .... in a different format. Instead of an immediate link to my computer there was a 'drag photo here' link. How to do this on this website is new to me so I'll need to sort it out, maybe today. Way hay. Twin-spotted Wainscot The solution was simple. Why couldn't I have been told that by Google instead of the, ' We can't tell you anything more' message?

Wednesday August 14 The Sculthorpe Mill Spotted Flycatchers seem to have fledged and departed, we didn't see any Swifts today either. 'Our' Buzzard fledgling has left the area at last. Two weeks of its constant calling for food has tried our patience. Lovely to start wirh and then a wish for it to stop. As is now annually expected, a young Green Woodpecker is making its presence known locally. We've seen it in the garden once, ant-hunting in the perennial bed, but it often sounds as though its with us somewhere. We still have House Martins flying around the eaves, there were fewer elsewhere. We timed our arrival at Snettisham to perfection, over an hour before high tide. But........it was a very low high tide, only 4.39. It needs to be well over 6, preferably 7 for the Spectaculars advertised on TV and various nature programmes. A couple in the rotary Hide asked us where the mass of waders was. We were able to point out that a distant island was actually covered in Knot...