Suited & definitely Booted in Lowerstoft

Booted Warbler

Booted Warbler teasing the crowd

Northern Wheatear

Fun on the sea front

Boy Band "Suited & Booted"

 A gloomy Breydon Water

It's been a pretty quiet year on the twitching front in 2018 despite some noteable additions. The Autumn always increases hope on new birds to see but it's quite often the case it will be a long journey east. My current car was sadly retired after Fridays journey after clocking up 149,000 miles, most of those miles were either birding or completing sports taxi journeys. 

With the car due it's handover I planned to get in a finals days birding in the old boy. The plan would be leave home at 6pm and start a jouney east. If the previous days Booted Warbler was reported early we would head there, if not we would try Norfolk or Spurn.  Thankfully for us positive news was released early so the satnav was directed to Lowestoft in Suffolk. The journey was pretty smooth until we reached our destination town when an apparent accident brought the town to gridlock. We opted to dump the car in a multi-storey and walk along the sea wall to where the bird was reported.

Around 40 birders were present all satisfied with good views and we didnt have to wait long to secure our next lifer. Chris had actually seen two previosly. The bird crept up the Tamarisk to show well and then edged north dipping in and out of view. Getting photographs was very difficult so had to settle with what I managed to get. 

The broad bill based & square tailed warbler was certianly smaller than I expected. This subtle warbler hails from Finland, Russia & Kazakhstan so is an impressive record given the unfavourable westerlie winds. 

A couple of Whinchats & Wheatear were present in close proximaitey but there was no movement out at sea so we opted to head to Breydon Water. In all honestly this was a tad disappointing, the best of what we could see in worsending conditions were 6 Ringed Plover, 100+ Redshank, 6 Dunlin, 8 Curlew, a Mediterian Gull and 2 Little Egret.