Coo-eeee!

I have been to Norfolk this week, and haven't even had the time to write about it before disappearing elsewhere. Such are the demands of running a zoo.


Spent a very pleasant couple of days around Norwich/the broads with the boy, and managed to grab a couple of life ticks in between various zoo-based commitments (lesser-spotted woodpecker, common crane, tree pipit, eider and stone curlew).

For today though, I am in the Lake District en-route to Mull, and very nice it is too...

Of birds and butterflies

So Norfolk is quite good isn't it?


We saw loads of stuff, including some life firsts (bearded tits, long tailed duck, bittern, various warblers, and a certain amazing bird of prey) , but just as impressive as the fact that Norfolk has so many birds that you practically trip over them, we also racked up an impressive mammal and butterfly list. So in light of the fact we found a veritable shitload of biodiversity, here are some very edited highlights...

orange tip butterfly

speckled wood butterfly

a common cockchafer, which seemed to not be very good at staying the right way up

early purple orchid? (maiden is welcome to correct me on this )

A muntjac that lept in front of our car

An obvious highlight of our Norfolk trip was a boat trip to Blakeney Point, and saw plenty of common seals, a grey seal, all four tern species, piles of oystercatcher and more suprisingly brent geese, and a sing female long tailed duck flying over our heads and landing on the water as we landed on the shore.

Common seal trying not to float away apparently

four sandwich terns (copyright Parus for this one)

One of the most entertaining birds we saw wasn't massively rare, but was absolutely stunning. I think Parus has a video of this sedge warbler somewhere, I'm hoping that he will be putting it up for us to share :)

sedge warblers are awesome :)

Other highlights included barn owls and tawny owls keeping us up in the night, loads of cuckoos, bearded tits pinging over the reeds at Titchwell, a little ringed plover at Cley, and a bittern flying out of the reeds at Lakenheath on the way home.

This is the best barn owl picture I have out of about 20. Oh well :)

ahh, East Anglia how I love thee...

I am sure we will be visiting again in the not too distant future, and camping was good fun. As long as we don't have a screaming 18 month old in the tent next time I'm definitely up for a revisit.

One day I might tell you about how I lost my mobile phone somewhere in a forest for a day, and the adventure we went on to recover it...