Norfolk Trip - Day 2

On Friday morning after breakfast I drove across to Cley on the A149 and pleased to get through Stiffkey without meeting the school bus I arrived at the reserve car park at just after 9.00AM to find the wind if anything was blowing even stronger than yesterday.What a bummer!!!!!!

Had a quick look in the Bishop hide to find it empty and the water high.There were no birds of any interest to see so I decided to walk the east bank and what a battle it was against the wind.When I reached the dunes I'd seen very little and the few birders I'd met said the same thing "There's nothing about".

I then went back to the path that runs along the road and try and get some shots of the Marsh Hariers that fly over the marsh.I stayed there for nearly 2 hours battling against the wind and trying to get some shots of the Harriers of which there were at least 5 flying around but the miserable so and so's mainly kept a long way off.Managed to get a few half decent shots but the changing light conditions and the bloody wind made it very difficult.

After some lunch at the centre I went across country to the Montague Harriers viewing point near North Creek but as I pulled into the carpark I saw that there were no other birders there which was not a good sign.After about 30 minutes though I got a brief and very distant view of the male which was approx. 2 fields away up the hill.Other birders had arrived by this time but after waiting for another hour we did not get any further views and all shouts of "there's one over here" turned out to be Marsh Harriers.Some of the shouts were mine of course.

A few pics attackhed.Click on them to enlarge.