Seymour Birdies Diary: A White Stork at Lakenheath Fen

14th May 2022

The middle of May and the Hobbys should be gathering at Lakenheath Fen. I set off along the trail to a wall of birdsong, but unbelievably all the birds were either distant or deep in bushes. In fact, the only bird on show was this cracking male Reed Bunting in full song.

And don't you find it annoying when you are trying to photograph something and somebody else is coming the other way? Well, on this occasion it worked in my favour as they spooked the Muntjac and it came running towards me. How good is that?

All very quiet at the New Fen viewpoint apart from this Water Rail that was seen scurrying along the reedy margins.

Dragonflies are now on the wing in good numbers including Hairy Dragonflies although the warm weather meant that they didn't settle for a photograph, and the only shots I managed were of an Azure Damselfly and a Four-spotted Chaser

So what about the target species - Marsh Harrier, Bitter and Hobby? Well the only harrier that came at all close was the female from the New Fen pair which circled around lazily quite high up, presumably taking a break from incubating.

Still too early for Bittern feeding flights, but there was just one flight although a bit distant.

The Hobbys were in disappointingly low numbers. Normally in the middle of May the pre-breeding gathering reaches 80 or so birds but today there were just 12 and due to the warm weather they were sky-high but I did manage to grab a couple of shots.

Anyway, all-in-all a god day and we were just about to head back to the car park when news came through that there was a White Stork on The Wash, so off we set. As we walked up the river bank the bird was already in flight and we managed to track it until landed on our side of the river. So then it was just a matter of walking slowly along the bank taking shots as we went.