Snettisham Spectacular

Sunday October 8

Travelling directly to Snettisham RSPB, we arrived a half hour before high tide. The Wash was already fully under water, the tide was 7.1 m, very high. We'd missed the fly in to the pits, that would have been before dawn.

Patience required.

A steady trickle of birders wandered to and fro, one tired looking elder stopping to ask how we'd managed to drive down. It's a long trudge from the car park.

At high tide, a fast flying, amorphous, low-flying smoke  of two thousand birds rose over the pit bank, sped to the far bank and.......flew back again. The twirlies. Much too early.

As the receding tide exposed distant mud, more and more birds left the densely populated islands in the pit, landing in the far distance until the shore looked like a black belt-line.

We both noticed that, regardless of species, an odd bird would helicopter into the air, before dropping to regain its position in the flock. Why?

Time to leave and, take up position for the dropping tide, at the eastern end. Small goups of mixed - common - species dropped into the russet, samphire edged mud

Curlew in the Samphire

Mixed Group

Lunch at Brancaster, entertained by a Little Egret fishing at the mouth of an inlet, the rushing outfill seeming to direct fish into its open beak.
 

No reports on the pager, was it still there? We were able to stop on the road to view the normally flooded field east of Stiffkey village. Yes. A white flash showed briefly amongst the cattle at the back of the field. The Cattle Egret then walked into the open before disappearing again.