A Few Surprises at Thornham Harbour

20th October 2019

After a successful few hours on Titchwell Beach yesterday, time for a change of scene at Thornham Harbour. This place never ceases to amaze me as most of the birds here are incredibly tame and will allow you to approach to 10-15 yards, so lets hope they are equally well-behaved today. As usual the first birds to appear were the Redshanks and Bar-tailed Godwits.

It is normally possible to photograph Curlews on the creek and they were indeed present. But today they were also feeding close in on the saltmarsh which provides a much better background.

So what were the surprises? Well, the first was the appearance of a Greenshank. I had heard a couple calling out towards Holme, but then one flew in to the creek, the first I have ever seen here.

And the second surprise was a Knot which appeared from nowhere amongst the Redshanks, again the first I have seen on the creek.

I have seen Rock Pipits here before but normally just flyovers that settle out of sight on the saltmarsh, so today the third surprise was when one called and landed in front of me on the creek, then another, and another until eventually there were at least 10 spaced out along the creek sometimes combining into groups of three. This provided some ideal opportunities on the mud, the boats and the mooring ropes.

Even Rock Pipits lose their footing sometimes.

Here is one against a lovely backdrop of some Glasswort.

At the harbour there is normally two flocks of finches, a large flock of Linnets and a smaller flock of Twite. Today the flock of Linnets were present but so far there has been no reports of any Twite. There was a leucistic Linnet amongst the main flock which was easy to pick out in flight being almost totally white, so much so they it had been identified as a Snow Bunting and an Arctic Redpoll. Unfortunately, it was not visible in this shot but has been confirmed as a leucistic Linnet.

So time now to head off home and I was back at the car changing my shoes when one of the birders I had been talking to next to the top car park came running over to tell me that four Twite had just landed on one of the old jetty posts next to what used to be the Old Granary. I rushed back and they were still there, busy preening in the afternoon sunshine.

What was noticeable was that the top-left bird had colour rings and an enlargement of the photo revealed that the combination was:

Right Leg: White over Red

Left Leg: Grey/Pink over BTO ring

It will be interesting to find out where it was ringed.