Started the morning off with a visit to the church yard at Happisburgh, where a Radde's Warbler had been reported yesterday. Unfortunately, there was no sign of it, but there were plenty of birds coming in off the sea, mainly Skylarks, Starlings and finches. I headed north and stopped off at a few places along the coast until I got Mundesley, where I parked up at the holiday camp and walked south along the cliff top towards Bacton Gas Terminal, checking the fields and the sheltered habitat below the cliff.
There was a particularly co-operative Snow Bunting near the car park, which was presumably fresh-in and allowed me to get quite close to it. Further along the cliff-top path the characteristic twitter-"tuuuu" call of a Lapland Bunting attracted my attention as it flew around with some Skylarks. I remained in that area for a while (the smallest grassy field midway between the holiday camp and the gas terminal) and counted up to five birds together at once in the field. There were lots of Skylarks and Meadow Pipits in the fields, but nothing rarer.
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| Snow Bunting, Mundesley |
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| Snow Bunting, Mundesley |
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| Snow Bunting, Mundesley |
I then headed into Mundesley and looked around the sheltered areas near Sandy Gulls Caravan Park. There were a few birds, along with quite a big Long-tailed Tit flock in the area, but nothing to shout about. I then headed up to Trimming. Just after I passed the radar station I saw a swift flying around over the road, so I jumped out and managed to get some half-decent photos of it.
As first I thought it was a Common Swift as it was so dark and the outer primary was the longest, but as Chris Batty quickly informed me, these features don't rule out Pallid. You can see a number of features that point towards Pallid Swift in the photos below. The most telling feature is that the throat is grey and not white and the eye stands out because the grey goes behind the eye, making they eye more obvious. You can also make out some 'scaling' of the underparts in some of the photos and pale tips to the coverts on the upperwing.
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| Pallid Swift, Trimmingham |
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| Pallid Swift, Trimmingham |
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| Pallid Swift, Trimmingham |
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| Pallid Swift, Trimmingham |
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| Pallid Swift, Trimmingham |
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| Pallid Swift, Trimmingham |
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| Pallid Swift, Trimmingham |
After the swift headed off inland I headed over to the north side of Trimmingham, where I found other birders watching a Pallid Swift between Trimmingham and Sidestrand. Although this bird was a bit more distant the paleness of this bird was very obvious and although the light had gotten a bit better now, I'm pretty sure this wasn't the bird I'd seen and photographed earlier.
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