We were on site very early this morning (0430am!) to make the most of the still morning before the westerly wind picked up.

It was a good mornings ringing processing 38 birds, 32 new and 6 retraps. It was nice to have some migrants coming through with 3 Willow Warbler, 9 Sedge Warbler and 8 Reed Warbler. Sadly no Pied Flys, yet….

Ringing totals (New/Retraps)

• Blue Tit 2
• Cetti’s Warbler 1
• Willow Warbler 3
• Chiffchaff 1/1
• Blackcap 2/1
• Sedge Warbler 9
• Whitethroat 1
• Reed Warbler 8
• Lesser Whitethroat 2/1
• Robin -/1
• Dunnock -/1
• Wren 2/1

One of the Lesser Whitethroat was a young bird (hatched this year) with a fault bar in the tail. A fault bar on a bird’s tail is a weak, translucent line across the feathers caused by some kind of environmental stress, possibly due to a lack of food or poor weather during growth. Because young nestlings grow all their tail feathers at the exact same time, a matching fault bar spanning across every tail feather in line indicates the bird is a juvenile and was hatched this year. Adults can also show fault bars but as adult birds replace tail feathers one by one sequentially over time, rather than all at once, any adult fault bars will look misaligned across different feathers.

Lesser Whitethroat fault bar

The birding highlight of the day was 2 Cattle Egret which were sitting in a tree on the grazing marsh! Mid-morning 123 Curlew went east over the grazing marsh. Otherwise it was a good day for waders with 2 Turnstone over the Obs, 36 Black-tailed Godwit, 4 Whimbrel, 7 Dunlin, 1 Greenshank and 36 Redshank. There were 7 Spoonbill altogether on the Broadwater. There was light Hirundine passage with 15 Swallow and 11 House Martin all going west.

Moths were busy this morning, more with numbers than diversity with good numbers of Turnip and Setaceous Hebrew Character. The highlight of the morning was an immigrant moth called Pearly Underwing – the hind wing is an amazing pearly iridescent. We also had a Saltmarsh Knot-horn which a nationally scarce moth. There were at least 2 Southern Migrant Hawker at the car park hides path, Migrant Hawker and Ruddy Darter around. I had a Small Tortoiseshell near the NOA car park which haven’t been easy to see this year.

Shannon

NORFOLK BIRD NEWS FROM RAREBIRD ALERT

Norfolk Pied Fly juv Cley NWT just west of old visitor centre. c52.9542,1.0557 Park at c52.9544,1.0567

Norfolk Wood Sand Welney WWT from Lyle Hide at 10.51am c52.5332,0.2814

Norfolk Curlew Sand Snettisham RSPB still +Little Stint still c52.8603,0.4450 Park at c52.8685,0.4526

Norfolk 2.Wood Sands Cley NWT on Pat’s Pool from Bishop’s Hide at 10am c52.9563,1.0581 Viewed from c52.9561,1.0582 Park at c52.9544,1.0567

Norfolk no sign of Caspian Tern Breydon Water at east end 9.30-10.30am at high tide c52.6144,1.7162

Norfolk Honey Buzzard just east of Honing flew north at 8.50am 52.7945,1.4586

Norfolk CASPIAN TERN Breydon Water at east end at 8.40am c52.6144,1.7162

Norfolk 2.Quails y’day Great Massingham c52.7678,0.7407