Had decided late last night to do a really early morning pre work trip to Burnham Overy Dunes. With my mate Tom nailed in Hunstanton I gave Oliver Revielle a call to see if he was up for a pre dawn trip to BOD. He was and we met in heavy rain at 7am . It was dark. The plan, to walk to The Dunes and get there for first birding light. The rain abated and we walked. Raid overnight = birds , we discussed possibilities on the way down ! Fantasies of course.
So first up the Isabelline Wheatear. After a short while watching it we decided to leave the crowd of some ten birders and walk towards the west point. Plenty of skulking Dunnocks on the way to keep us amused and then the pager sprung into life. Apparently there had been a Desert Wheatear at BOD yesterday, but only just identified from photographs. Crumbs, that added a skip to our walk. If the rain had kept the Isabelline Wheaear here, who knows perhaps the Desert was still lurking somewhere. We had good walk round, made all the nicer as we were the only people there apart from one other birder.
That other birder suddenly shouted "lads" (very generous of him to include me in that genre) ... and within a few seconds we were watching a Desert Wheatear. The three of us watched it for a good few minutes as it flew around the spit and back to the container area. Info was put out re the re location and we retreated with our two Wheatear day, me to work and Oli back to home.
Here some pics of the Desert Wheatear: it started quite a way off , a grey bird on a very grey background, then we were lucky enough to have it fly straight towards us and start to preen..
The Isabelline Wheatear on way back
and a Little Egret landing in the Marsh, pretending to be an Eagle hunting fish
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