My Little Auk

So the the saga of the Little Auk. I take you back to Monday before last, a cold and blustery wintry morning at Snettisham, masquerading as November 12th. The ongoing Little Auk wreck (following the deep North Sea depression that had battered if not quite lacerated through the North Norfolk coast with a strong tidal storm surge) was taking place further east, so we weren't quite expecting to find any. Oh but we did. First sighting came with four bobbing around in the high tide, only a few feet from the shore. Lovely squat birds, sort of bullet-shaped, and for all my bird knowledge they still looked like fresh chicks. Of course they weren't.
A nice lifer then, but onward back to the pub for the &B part of our bed and breakfast weekend.

The walk back to the car park at Snettisham takes anywhere between 30 and 50 minutes depending on how many times the birds stop you, and stopped we were by another Little Auk, this time on the lagoon behind the holiday huts. This time something was wrong, the bird paddled weakly and as we stood to watch, it slowly but inevitably floated into the horrible foam on the windblown side of the water.


It was stranded, rolling in this froth, utterly stuck. Now usually I'm not one to intervene; Magpies I'm perfectly happy to have them as a garden visitor and when the Sparrowhawk takes one of my Blackbirds I'm actually quite thrilled - it's like a David Attenborough film outside your kitchen window. This time, clearly leaving things be wasn't going to be satisfactory, this birds, its dignity, it deserved better.

Glad for my gloves I scooped it up and rushed the damp fella back over the seawall to the beach, in hopes of refloating him. In retrospect it was never going to happen, and after a few feeble efforts the slosh of the sea's motion grounded the bird again.


Settling on the conclusion that it was likely to die, we reasoned that the best thing to do would be to rest the bird back down on the bank of the lagoon, this time on the sheltered sunny side. If was to die at least it was somewhere quiet, and sadly die it did, as we discovered after returning from our breakfast. The bird was never very lively, in truth it wasn't only exhausted but water-logged too.

Elsewhere in the country I'm sure similar stories are being recited, with almost 30,000 Little Auks past the Farne Islands in one day, and individuals blown as far inland as Doncaster, it's clear this was quite the birding event of the autumn this year in Britain, a lot of birders happy for the tick and I'm sure plenty of grateful gulls were happy to gobble the weakened auks down whole.

There will be a lot of discussion over why this occurred, was it just the storm pattern that pushed the auks so far south or could it be something more worrying like climate change induced disturbance of their marine food source? Likely to be both I would suppose.
The smallest of the auks (about the size of a Starling but much heaiver - believe me!), this species does come closer to shore in winter than its larger cousins, although for the large part they'll stick to the open ocean, the North Sea, the Atlantic and as far north as the Arctic ice shelf. They live for upto 10 years, perhaps a good deal more, and feed chiefly on plankton, invertebrates and small fry.

A lifer for us then, a life diminished too, and a bird held in the hand that quite probably came from a Spitsbergen breeding colony, a good deal north of the Norwegian mainland, from one of the nests not plundered by a Polar Bear. Memorable stuff from our hobby yet again.

link - an article in the Independent about this Little Auk wreck

Norfolk Trip Part Two: Snettisham

So onwards from Rutland, we spent the second day dotting up the north Norfolk coast to the RSPB reserves at Snettisham and Titchwell. Always heard big things about both places, had not yet been though. The truth? They're up to their billing.




Although the tide was a long way out the mudflats at Snettisham still proved fruitful, sitting on the sea wall we could see among others, crowds of Curlew, Grey and Golden Plover, Black-tailed Godwit, Avocet and Brent Geese stretching into the haze beyond the horizon.












The walk from the car park is pretty long compared to some reserves and that is no bad thing. Along the way we saw Skylark, Linnet, various Geese flying overhead. All of the hides look out onto a lagoon where Black-headed Gull and Avocet were preparing to breed. Geese were plentiful, Greylag, Brent, Canada, a couple of late Pink-feet, Barnacle and two Snow Geese with them. Lots of duck too though nothing special, the regular, Wigeon, Teal, Shoveler, Gadwall, etc.

With all those screeching Black-headed Gull around it seemed a good idea to check for Mediterranean Gull and it was worth it. There were at least two, with one bird showing very well. Initially I was a bit confused by the black dots on the wing-tips and eventually settled for calling it s a '2nd summer' bird.

That's him on the left there.
You can see how it stands out against the slightly smaller and ironically browner-headed Black-headed Gull there. It was #189 for my life list.

Bird of the day, Shore Lark, two pairs foraging along the strand line and up to the sea wall, just along from where we sat. That's #190 for me. Marvellous views too, all the detail on the facial mask and true yellow too.

Back toward the car park and a couple more species, Red-legged Partridge showing particularly well. And across the path scuttled a Sand Lizard, it was brilliantly green, like something out of a pet shop.

The only drawback we found were the lack of facilities at Snettisham, no visitor centre, no reception hide, no toilets, nothing really, except the car park and hides. I was quite surprised to find this at such a famous reserve. The only other word of warning is that during our time there Snettisham appeared popular with group visitors, the sort that stick together and occupy an entire hide instead of splitting up to allow space for others, so there wasn't much room to move in some of the hides.
Still, a top visit, and we must return one day for that high tide winter spectacular. It was pretty gratifying to loop the reserve closely behind a man and his young son. The kid looked genuinely enthused.

Then it was onwards for an evening at Titchwell, just ten miles along the A149, leaving behind the famed Black-eared Kite that hangs around the area. It's been a long stayer since November and throughout that time probably the 'best' bird in Britain, a real 'mega'. They apparently belong in China and this juvenile is still the only individual ever to be seen in Western Europe. Damned elusive too though, even for those on all the best rarities paging services.
Not imagining we would find it, I couldn't count myself disappointed when we didn't.