Costa Del Suffolk, 30/03/10

Never again will I write off the month of March.

Jetted over to Westleton Heath yesterday afternoon. Passed a few Kestrels on the way; nope, not quite. Genuinely nervous in the car, this was the first twitch I had been on in ages. Parked up just off the road and made my way over to the small crowd on the ridge. Thankfully, I didn't have to wait too long until my and Suffolk's first Lesser Kestrel put in a satisfying if distant performance. It appeared to be taking insects from the ground and then feeing on various posts. Amazing brick red colour contrasted with an almost blue-looking tail. Got it! The Great Grey Shrike nearby was a nice sideshow for when the Kestrel was not on view.

Tried my luck for the Pallid Swift at Kessingland. 30 blokes loitering at the gates of a sewage works, how must that have looked?! No luck. Saw one birder checking the church for roosting swifts though, top birding!

What a few days! Keep an eye on those charts would be the lesson learnt here.

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Everything is about edge

Hardley, where it is often confusing to define where the garden ends and the marsh begins. Tumble-down houses and rickety shacks, away from any bus route and Team Sky sorts wrapped in lycra, this is a village that by choice is cut off. The secret is out, and pre-storm Ciara as many as 10 large lenses littered the river bank firing at will. Their target- Winter ghosts. First, the classic Scooby-Doo type, as a Barn Owl responds to an ill-advised squeak in the grass and heads towards the onlookers. Another quickly joins the hunt, their formation a picture of double-edged stealth. But these year-round residents are not the key objective today, that honour is given to the Short-eared Owl. 3/4 of these can be seen from the staithe at the minute, floating like giant moths over the tussocks and edges. In a recent article in The New Yorker, Jake Fiennes states "Everything is about edge". Hedges, ditches, scrub, forgotten tracts of land that link nothing and no-one. Fiennes, now ...

Grey Phalarope- a new patch bird

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Claxton-on-sea!

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Notes from the valley

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