Weekend Raptors

With a fine weather weekend and continued reports of at least one osprey hanging out at Lyng I took an hour or so out of Saturday in hope of seeing a bird that I have not seen outside of Scotland. I didn’t have time to check out the local NWT site at Sparham Pools although with the benefit of hindsight hopefully it wasn’t full of Ospreys fishing.I took the recommended spot at the entrance to Three Bridges Farm and talked with others who had watched it fishing in the lakes several times in the day. The shot below was taken by Justin Waters who had considerably better timing than myself.

The wait produced a number of other sightings however including green woodpecker, fishing cormorant, greylag and Egyptian geese numerous pheasants and red legged partridges as well as a flock of long-tailed tits which contained at least 40 birds. Earlier in the day James E had also seen a flock of siskins. The area as per other parts of the Wensum valley is clearly wildlife rich and as the photo below shows not without some natural beauty.

 My Personal assistant keeping tally

Having failed with the osprey’s the next day was to offer some raptor compensation. I had to visit Melsop Farm Park for a birthday celebration and the avian highlight was not the range of domestic and exotic species but some of the locals taking an opportunity to soar on the slowly heating thermals. First and ever present were three buzzards who alerted me by their calls and they were followed by two red kites.  The photos I managed to capture were somewhat distant but offer a side by side opportunity for the less experienced to see the different shapes of the birds.

 Buzzard with its broad wings and tail

Red kite with its distinctive forked tail and agile flight.

Just in case I am starting to lose the interest of my regular readers looking for better quality photos I have a further one of a red kite kindly donated by John Mallaney and worth checking out on his website (here). 

On my journey home the red kites appeared again over the Watton Rd near Hingham this time being harassed by the local jackdaws. Hingham generally seems to be a regular spot for these birds which I am yet to see around the village. Just a word of warning finally if you are tempted to venture Hingham way they are hosting numerous displays of scarecrows as part of their Harvest Festival so don’t go hoping to see crows, or perhaps after dark?