An interesting day

Friday 9 March 2018
I started the day with an hour at Sculthorpe Moor near Fakenham and got lucky with a touch of early morning sunshine. The paths at this lovely nature reserve were less than lovely and covered in ice so tentative walking slowed me down a bit I a modelled myself on a Penguin type approach, bit of a slow moving waddle. I ended up at the Volunteer's Hide and was confronted with a mass of movement around the feeders. Blimey there seemed to be everything there, Bullfinches, Bramblings, Siskins, Redpolls, Goldfinches etc etc. I decided to concentrate on the Redpolls in case they stopped feeding, a mistake because it was the Bullfinches that fed early and then disappeared, but nevertheless these Redpolls were looking great. There were about a dozen Lesser Redpolls and a couple of Mealy Redpolls.

In the previous month I'd made several trips to see Coues's Arctic Redpoll and had at best only poor views. Mealys had proved better for views but no decent photos and while it seemed everyone who owned a camera was posting crippling pictures of all three species I was still struggling to even get decent views. Well this morning was different for two of the three as these birds were close.

Many people with experience of this group advise caution and rightly so. The differences can sometimes be subtle and overlap between the species makes it even harder. Lesser Redpolls like the picture immediately above are the smallest of the three and when you get to see a male like this one are relatively easy due to all the red in the above the bill, around the face and on the underparts. The fringes to the flight feathers and wing bars are yellow buff in colour.

Compare that to the bird in the top picture and the fringes are pale. Overall the bird is paler than the Lesser . Other characteristics are the under wing coverts which typically have multiple blackish arrowheads on a white background as seen here when it was giving some grief to another Redpoll on the feeder.

I definitely need more practise with these but the Challenge Series Winter by Martin Garner is great and I have lifted some text from it here in my descriptions. A few more Redpolls: Mealy, Lesser then both

Also arriving at the feeders were Siskins although after about twenty minutes the Bullfinches had disappeared. Here a few Siskins:

With only an hour available I had to drag myself away for a meeting at Pensthorpe. Following the meeting which took significantly longer than it should have done due to punctures (it's too long and painful a story but bet not many people have had 7 in eight months) I headed for Holkham Bay to look for the Shorelarks. While watching some 9 of these delightful birds running around on the dunes news came through of a Snowy Owl. I don't really twitch but as this was some 50m from the shop I was off !
A very short walk down the drove and there on the sea bank was a small group of people with scopes ! And out near Scolt Head sat unmoving was a first winter Snowy Owl. Nice. A long way off for pictures but you can just see it below:

and to finish the day off a Barn Owl at Bircham