I had a plan in mind to set off early and get up to Thrapston, to see the group of 6 1st-winter Velvet Scoters that had taken up residence on Town Lake since the previous Sunday. It looked likely I'd miss out on this valuable county tick, but miraculously, they had hung on for me.
Friday was a beautiful bright, crisp day and ideal to be out and about. I made my way to the southern side of town lake, hoping the scoters would still be in situ. I eventually found a gap in the lake side trees to view a reasonable amount of the lake.
Relief soon enveloped me, as a single Velvet Scoter appeared in my bins, loosely associating with a group of Tufties. I walked further along and after a bit of effort, found another opening in the trees to enjoying closer, better views of the bird.
After a while, a second Velvet joined it and then the other 4 appeared a little later too, in the middle of the lake. I don't know where they were all hiding but now all 6 were in view! I spent some time getting lovely scope views and also picked out the recently reported 1st-winter Scaup too. Bonus!
It was now 10 o'clock and I was mulling what to do next. Either I mooched around a few county sites to try and find something OR, being well on the way to Norfolk, would it be a bit mad to go there for the afternoon?
Well, I'd realised that I had spent so much of 2018 patch birding and keeping it local, that I'd yet to see a lifer at all this year. So with the lure of of the probable Stejneger's Stonechat & King Eider in North Norfolk, I was soon heading around the Peterborough ring road and on towards Kings Lynn! Calling my Norfolk mate Kieran, he was luckily free and so we agreed to meet at Salthouse beach road, about 12:45pm.
The possible Stejneger's Stonechat was a short walk away, along the Meadow Lane track. To be honest, we thought it would be relatively straightforward, particularly as it had been reported a few times already during the morning. But, for a good half hour it went AWOL! Thankfully though, someone else picked it out not too far from where we were. It certainly is a distinctive bird, with a noticeably white throat, pale underparts and a peachy rump which was not easy to see but could occasionally be seen when the bird was at rest. With DNA obtained from it's poo, we all await the results with interest!
Just after 2 o'clock, we hopped in our cars again and headed along to Sheringham. Just right of the seawatching shelter were several others already looking. After a brief scan with the bins, the 2nd-winter King Eider was duly located and there was my second UK lifer of the day! We soaked up the bird for a good 20-30 minutes, watching it diving for crabs. The light was immense and while it was a scope job to see it, the views were not to be sniffed at! We had a quick look for Purple Sands on the rocks down by the public toilets, but just the usual Turnstones were in situ.
With it now 3pm, I had about an hour and a half until sunset. Enough time then to finish the day at Stiffkey to look for raptors, before getting home for dinner! I therefore parted ways with Kieran and wound my way along the coast road to Stiffkey.
I walked a short way west from the campsite car park and set the scope up. No more than a minute later, a female Merlin flew past west, really close by before setting off after some Mipits. Better was then to come with a fairly distant but fantastic male Hen Harrier, slowly making it's way west, pausing several times to half-heartedly chase something before carrying on it's path. Well that was all rather easy and seemed like the ideal way to end the day.
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