counting coots

After the incredible photos on the previous post were taken, Mrs Thing and I began to make our way to the exit of Surlingham Church Marsh.  When we arrived, there was a couple there that were obviously birders.  And they had a fair bit of gear with them.  Actually they had all the gear with them.  Top notch scopes, bins, tripods and everything - they must have had about eight grands worth of optics between them.  We roll up with a knackered pair of twenty year old germans between us and a bag containing a drawscope in a leather case.  The beauty of a patch like Surlingham is that most days you don't need a scope.  With half decent skills and a pair of clean binoculars you can comfortably ID everything.  And if you need the scope, there are plenty of posts about and a hide.  This means that you can travel light, and enjoy the visit without walking around in some crazy lopsided way, loaded down with large chunks of metal and glass.  So we asked them if they were looking at anything interesting in the church yard.  There are often Brambling in there they said but none today.  He looked at my optics, and I think that they may have confused him but he asked the secret birders code question -  'anything about?'.  My answer obviously identified me as a birder (of sorts) because I used a turn of phrase that made him realise that I was the real deal, or something close to it. 

"Oh there isn't much about, the lagoons are still frozen, there are some ducks in the dykes but there are a fair few confiding Fieldfare near the hides"

Confiding Fieldfare.  That's what nailed it.  You may not see anything rare, but there is a good looking bird that you can get close to - proper birding. 

Because of this he gave us a tip off - there was a Great Northern Diver on a stretch of water not far away (which we had already toyed with going to on the way home) and I think that if I hadn't described the Fieldfare as confiding he may not have bothered.

Stay with me dear reader, there is more.  At the Diver site, which I suppose technically may be described as a Tw*tch (Lord have mercy on my soul for I have sinned against the Holy Patch) there were birders and there was a Diver and a Smew and some other ducks and stuff.  Very, very nice indeed.  Just to the right of the throng (or whatever the collective noun for twitchers is - a page?) some bloke blurted out a sentence with a great deal of excitement.  This being Norfolk, you will now put your best Norfolk accent on for maximum effect....

"Eye gort a Kengfeshur en moy scoooop!"

Pretty much everyone stopped looking at the Diver, the Smew and the other birds and got on to the Kingfisher.  Because everyone likes a Kingfisher, and as I have said before, any day you see a Kingfisher is a good day.

Have a picture of that bird.

Before all shots of wintery conditions become passé  and irrelevant to a contemporary and up to the minute blog that lives on the very edge of the zeitgeist , here are some wintery shots.  Specifically images of Surlingham Church Marsh in the winter.  If you don't know or remember the relevance of Surlingham Church Marsh to this here blogger, click on the label under the post and all willl become clear.  Just look at all this habitat! 

Nice.

My first patch.

How the RSPB sees it.

How google sees it.









How I see it.




If I was to calculate the birding related place that I have spent the most amount of time in, it would without doubt be Havergate Island, but only due to the fact that on one visit I spent a whole month on the island with only two visits ashore for a pub lunch. After that and Fulham I would reckon that the patch of my youth comes in third on the timescale. Here is a little more on it.

Surlingham is a village on the south bank of the river Yare, a few miles south of Norwich. The RSPB reserve is between the river and the village by the rather higgledy piggledy church. The reserve is close to Wheatfen Broad, to the west and a little up river from the relative behemoth that is Strumpshaw Fen. Surlingham Church Marsh (I’ll call it Surlingham from now on) can be ‘done’ in a couple of hours whereas Strumpshaw will take you all day to do it properly – this is one of the reasons for choosing Surlingham as a patch. And the fact that it is never busy. I recently returned to Surlingham after a break of 15 or so years and took Mrs Thing for the first time. It wasn’t the busiest of birding days, but it is still a lovely spot and we intend to re-familiarise ourselves with the patch given the opportunity.

This was my patch between the mid 80’s (just after the RSPB bought it) until the very early 90’s. It had been a grazing marsh, and will have been prone to a bit of flooding. At that time the initial landscaping work had been done. The lagoons had been dug out and there was a couple of shingly islands in the middle. Dykes had been cleared and the natural vegetation was being left to re-establish itself. The lagoons were popular with ducks, especially in the winter and the shingle was proving to be a draw for occasional breeding and the usual vagrant waders. It was here that I learned my Ringed from my Little Ringed, the Wood from the Sand, and how to split my shanks. At one point the Little Ringed were trying to breed, but I remember not how successful they were. Other species of note that could be found included Turtle Dove, Marsh Harrier, Hen Harrier, Cuckoo, Greenshank, Water Rail, Gadwall, Whitethroat, Lesser Whitethroat, Sedge, Reed and occasional Cettis Warblers, occasional Bittern and Egyptian Goose (which was still quite unusual then). Other wildlife could include Muntjac Dear and Swallowtail Butterflies (super super pretty I can tell you).

After a few visits I managed to get in contact with the Warden and got into a bit of the volunteering side of things. Just the usual reserve stuff. Do any of you remember the initiative that the RSPB was involved with in 1987? It was called ‘Follow the Swallow’ and was a Europe wide push to get more people birdwatching. I still have the yellow sticker on the case of my bins, and I was one of the helpful volunteers on site that day. How could I not – it was my patch and I would be able to answer most questions about the place without hesitation.

I never found (or knew of for that matter) anything that would get a twitchers heart racing, but that is, and never was, the point. It's a patch, and it's about more than finding rare birds.

I'll yack on about it again later in the (National Patch Birding) week. For now, here is a view from near the church towards the river.

Surlingham doing patch.