Some Geese and some Cranes

As for usual I caught a ride with Brendan, Chris and Paul. This time we headed off to Suffolk and Norfolk. Our target birds for that day were Great Northern Diver, Purple Sandpiper, Snow Bunting, Taiga Bean Goose and raptors at Stubb Mill raptor roost. This was a big amount of target birds which were to get our year lists up and running. We started with the Great Northern Diver. As we pulled up into the car park next to were the Diver had been seen in Lowestof we all saw a grebe in front of the car in the water little did we know until we got out of the car that this was actually the GREAT NORTHERN DIVER. This was quickly ticked off so we got our photos and walked over to the most easterly point of the UK which is Ness Point. But before going we waited for Chris, Brendan and Pauls friend to arrive called Tony Stride. When he arrived he introduced himself and we headed straight for Ness Point. There we were hoping to connect with Purple Sandpipers and sure enough after a bit of looking we found a Purple Sandpiper amongst the Turnstones. Our next target bird was the Snow Buntings at Caister-on-Sea. Tony recommended that we should stop of at a good place to see Mediterranean Gulls (and so as I don't have to look up the spelling on Google for Mediterranean the whole time I'm going to call them Med Gulls). Tony led the way in his car to the spot were we instantly found the Med Gulls. We also saw a far off Red-throated Diver fly past. After taking some pics of the Med Gulls we headed off to Caister. There we located some SNOW BUNTINGS c. 40 of them. On the way around these places we also located more birds to add to our year lists. After the Snow Buntings we went for the big one the Taiga Bean Geese. When we were eventually allowed to cross the railway line we arrived at the reserve. We searched for a while but could not locate the Bean Geese but instead we found some Ruff and a pair of Peregrines. We also caught up with some more wildfowl. We then headed off to a neighbouring reserve to get some Marsh Tits which we did as well as some other species of tits. At this reserve someone told us were to find the Bean Geese and we headed straight over to see if we could get them. This time we we scanned over the reserve from Burnt House Lane. Soon enough we connected with the TAIGA BEAN GEESE 36 and three White-fronted Geese. We also saw a few large flocks of Pink-footed Geese fly over head. As we carried on scanning I relised I had failed to notice a huge flock of Golden Plover of at least 200 birds. But we still had more to go so we finished our day with a raptor watch at Stubb Mill. There we saw at least 30+ Marsh Harriers, three Barn Owls, 8-12 COMMON CRANES and I saw three HEN HARRIERS two Males and one Ring-tailed. All together this helped my year list a lot and I should be on 100 quite soon.

Pictures unfortunately I can't transfer my Digiscopes and my picture of the Great Northern Diver is faulty and goes green if I turn it into a JPG. But here are some pictures of a Med Gull and some Snow Buntings