It was a really good day for waterfowl, which started off with a trip to Cantley to see the newly arrived Taiga Bean Geese. I twice counted 30 birds, so I'm not sure where the other birds reported on the pager (49) were.
It was then off to Hickling and a visit to Rush Hills Scrape. The walk to the Weavers Way started really well with the discovery of a really big flock of Reed Bunting. There were about 50 birds in the flock, with about 40 Reed Buntings, 10 Yellowhammers and a few Chaffinch. I stopped and scoped the flock for 10 minutes but couldn't find anything else with them. When I arrived at Rush Hills Scrape, there were about 600 Common Teal with smaller numbers of Eurasian Wigeon and Northern Shoveler which were soon joined by another 3-400 birds, presumably from Swim Coots scrape. I slowly made my way through the birds and was delighted with a lovely drake Green-winged Teal, which kept to the same area of bank, about 50 metres to the north of the other hide. It was always quite distant, but I managed to get a few record shots of it plus some video. I watched it on and off for about half an hour until the teal were flushed by a Marsh Harrier. The Green-winged Teal then flew closer to the Weavers Way footpath hide and then drifted back to the bank.
I finished the day with a drive up to Horsey where I found 5 Whooper Swans and 6 Bewick's Swans mixed in with the Mute Swans next to the road between Horsey and Somerton. Not a bad day out really!
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| Green-winged Teal, Rush Hills Scrape |
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| Green-winged Teal, Rush Hills Scrape |
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| Green-winged Teal, Rush Hills Scrape |
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