Red Flanked Bluetail.
With so many good birds around this last few days i thought a day trip yesterday to North Norfolk was in order , i set of early this morning and headed towards towards Stiffkey and hopefully see the quite stunning Red Flanked Bluetail that has been there for the last couple of days and i was not disappointed , this stunning bird showed really well coming down to feed on some meal worms that had been put out for it .
This stump was less than 2 feet away .
Lovely buff flanks.
Really bright white throat patch.
Bright blue tail and rump.
White eye ring and pale based bill.
What a beauty this bird is , it favoured a small log pile and was very obliging , there were lots and i mean lots of Robins around and one in particular took a bit of a disliking to the Bluetail , almost every time it came in to feed the Robin would harass and try to chase it off , i enjoyed this bird for over an hour and left very happy indeed , other birds of note here were 2 Black Redstarts , lots of Goldcrest , and hundreds of Thrushes everywhere , the majority of these were Redwing which seemed to be in every hedge row and tree , Blackbirds and Fieldfare were well represented .
I heard news via the pager of an Arctic Warbler in willow trees at Brancaster Staithe so thats where i headed , on route i drove through Burnham Deepdale and noticed a female Ring Ouzel amongst 30 Blackbirds on a small green , so i stopped and had a look.
On arrival at Brancaster i was not sure of where to go and luckily i met 2 birders who were on route so i followed them along the coastal path and joined the finder of this smart warbler Graham Etherington , so there were just a handful of us trying to re locate it and i was
the last to get onto it , i seem to have trouble picking birds out high up in canopys !!!!
This was a great year tick for me , the Arctic Warbler showed a really strong supercillum and smallish single wing bar , it stayed mainly high up in the canopy but at times it did show lower down , other birds of note here were Common Redstart , Chiffchaff and several Goldcrest .
