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The last day of the summer holidays, and an opportunity to look at some migrants whilst Gary kept the yearlist ticking over. We started at Holme, becoming day members of the NOA to have a look at their Red-necked Phalarope. It seemed to have found the pool on Redwell Marsh to its liking, a view not shared by many other birds, and the circling feeding behaviour did make it look like it had been tied to four partially-submerged posts. A nice little earner ;-) The second red bird of the day was a stonking male Redstart spotted by Adam on the posts to the left of the hide.
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A walk around the forestry was stopped to allow a parade of ramblers through, but eventually we found a Pied Flycatcher. Little else of note, even in the NOA part of the reserve (my first walk around, I'd consider membership if there was a reserve closer to home). Walking back along the entrance track we saw a close Garden Warbler, Stonechat, female Redstart and finally a Red-backed Shrike (one of two present) before two Peregrines soared above us and then flew off south-eastwards.
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Next up was a bit of pub-birding from everyones favourite beer garden. Keeping our eye on the shingle ridge failed to provide a cheeky Lap Bunting, but we did get Common Tern, Sandwich Tern and Gannet passing through. Two more excellent pub ticks flew in, a Greenshank onto one of the scrapes and then three Whinchat (although there were four initially) on brambles straight out from the pub. A Hobby was a pub tick for Adam, whilst a couple of easy birds missing from my list were picked up in the form of Tufted Duck and Canada Goose.
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Refreshed we set out again, doubling back to Stiffkey. We waited on the saltmarsh for a while for a furtive Barred Warbler to show itself, seeing yet another Garden Warbler. Eventually the Barred Warbler did come out in the open, working its way down a small tree before vanishing again. We stopped briefly at Cley, seeing a couple of Wheatears on the Eye Field and getting some good views of passing Arctic Skuas. Two times one of the Arctics landed on the sea, and it made a nice change that the winds allowed us to watch them bobbing up and down. The downside of course was that nothing else was being blown towards us, so we left for Weybourne.
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We headed west from the main carpark, fighting our way through swathes of Pied Wagtails. No sign of the Wryneck seen earlier in the day, but a second Red-backed Shrike of the day was hunched low in the scrub near Moss' Pool. The vast expanse of the camp was inhabited only by Rabbits and Wheatears. We walked back, swotting more Pied Wags out of our hair. By the time I got back to Norwich it was dark - not only is it autumn, winter is coming!
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