A nice little diversion

17 January 2012

A short notice invite that I was able to accept due to a cancelled meeting, found me at my old pal Malc's house in Kelling, where in his back garden along with some fifty or so Lesser Redpolls he had not one but probably two Coues's Arctic Redpolls. One an absolute classic and a second, which they referred to as a Grey Redpoll, I thought I'd missed out on some new sub species, but it was the term they used to distinguishing it from the "stonker". But all in all two Arctics. Fantastic, and all watched from Malc's sitting room with a mug of coffee in hand listening to the likes of Andy Stoddart et al discussing the bird's finer points of id. Bloody great ! Here some pics through the lounge window.....

 I'd love to blame to soft quality of the pics on Malc's windows but I can't, having seen the pics others like John Miller were getting ! Still above is the stonker and here below is the "grey" individual. It had a browny patch in the ear coverts.

..... and a weird thing, here a Lesser Redpoll with a yellow crown, (didn't look like pollen) no one else mentioned it so "a find" ....yellow-crowned Redpoll, at last a first for........... actually it wasn't very exciting compared to the two white fellas !

s.

So a great experience and as I made my way back towards the shop I stopped briefly at Salthouse Beach car park and snapped off at a few Black-headed Gulls.

 no windows, big, white and definitely Black-headed Gulls, I could focus on these !

Ah also Common Gull

 and Sam's favourite duck, Teal, so I had to grab a pic of this

 Ok then, time ticking on and back to the shop. As I approached Holkham there were two birds off towards the Pines so I stopped in a small lay-by and had a quick look through the bins to see two Rough legged Buzzads coming my way.

and then it really was foot down and off to the shop. Nice, and if you are reading this Malc - many thanks.