The Church Owl

Rosy wash of sunset leaving
trees back lit in silhouette
the village church tower like an owl
whose hunting has not started yet.

Birding at Cley

The famous west wall at Cley, where many a vagrant was ticked and many a twitch ended in a dip.

On the Monday following the British Birdwatching Fair, David Tipling, my kind and generous host in Holt, took me birding at Cley, the famous bird watching hotspot in Norfolk. I'd known about Cley for years and had recently finished Mark Cocker's excellent book "Birders: Tales of a Tribe" which depicts Cley as the epicenter of the U.K. bird watching scene in the latter part of the 20th century. Though it is less of an epicenter now, Cley was legendary for its rare and vagrant birds, and for the legions of birders who congregated in the hides, homes, cafes, and pubs of this small coastal town.

Kestrel at Cley.

Out first stop was a pull off near the beach, some images of which I've already shared with you. On the way in, we had a close look at a European kestrel (which the Brits call, simply "kestrel"). I was sorry for the first (but not the last) time that I'd left my big rig Canon camera at home in Ohio. David, a world class bird and nature photographer had kindly left his gear at home, too. Today we were merely watching birds, not shooting them with cameras. I tried to convince myself that this felt liberating.

Salt House Pond just before the shrike.

After the kestrel and a look at some black-tailed godwits and a smattering of other waders, we drove back to the main road and stopped at a site known as Salt House Pond. We were hoping to find a little gull that had been seen here recently. On this day is was being seen elsewhere, not here. As we were turning to leave, I spotted a bird teed up on a nearby bush.

"Hey look! A shrike!" I said with a modicum of amusement. This caused David to spin around and glass the bird himself.

My shrike at a fair distance.

"That's a good bird, more than likely" he said. And it was. It turned out to be a juvenile red-backed shrike, likely a wanderer from The Netherlands across the North Sea from Cley. We never did get a great look at the bird, but enough to confirm its ID. Of course we got no photos—just my crumola images here.

My best shot, cropped and barely recognizable.

David reported the bird by cellphone to a local contact and minutes later the sighting rang through on his rare bird alert pager. Soon other birders were on the scene, sending in updates about the shrike's whereabouts. David commented that it was probably the best bird of the day along the Norfolk coast, which made me quite the happy lad.

Looking inland over Cley Marshes from the sea.

We spent the rest of the morning walking Cley's paths, down to the sea, along the shingle dunes, between the pools with strategically situated hides (what we call blinds). These hides are masterfully designed. The doors, floors, and benches do not squeak. The viewing slots have tension hinges that keep the slot doors from banging shut. And the bird watcher is rewarded, thanks to this ingenious design and forethought, with amazing view of waders and ducks and herons and gulls.

Entering a hide.

No shortage of viewing slots in the hide.

The view from one of the hides.

By mid-day I was hungry and I had my heart (and its precious aortic valves) set on fish and chips. David knew a place farther along the coast, so we jumped in his vehicle and zipped down the road. Arriving in a larger coastal town, we found the chip shop. It must be good, I thought, since a line of customers snaked out the door onto the sidewalk, waiting for service.

We eventually got to the order counter and were confronted by these fried choices:

Lunch was fish and chips, at my request.

I selected the cod and chips. David and I moved out of the chip shop queue (pronounced cue), and across the street to the quay (pronounced key) and ate our lunches while talking about the birds we'd seen at Cley (pronounced Kly).

It tasted far better than it looked. We ate on the seawall.

It was one heckuva day birding in one of the world's great, birdy places.

Invading Cley Beach

This was one of the more interesting ocean beaches I've ever walked. It is in Cley-Next-the-Sea in Norfolk in England. The beach was made up primarily of small, smooth, rounded stones. They clattered and skittered as you walked along—walking that was conducted with some difficulty I might add.

Cley (pronounced Cly, rhymes with "shy") is a small town along the east coast of England. For a bird watcher, it is the general equivalent of Cape May, New Jersey in the United States in its reputation for great birding and as a vagrant trap. I'll get more into the birding aspects of Cley in tomorrow's post. For today I want to describe to you, and show you, the landscape between Cley and the North Sea.
Despite the town's name, Cley is no longer "next-the-sea." Land reclaimed from the sea has been turned over to agriculture, and the harbor, once a bustling port trading with mainland European countries, has silted in. Still, Cley retains much of its charm. Not the least of which is its windmill, the town's most recognizable feature. Tourism is now the town's primary economic engine, and a lot of the folks who come here are coming to look at birds.

Looking out over the North Sea from Cley, the land opposite—The Netherlands—is too far away to see. But these beaches were once thought to be a potential invasion site for the Axis powers during World War II. They were used by the Allies as a practice and staging area for the Normandy invasion. Remnants of these wartime activities are still readily apparent. Pill boxes and the foundations of gun emplacements are scattered along the shingle dunes.

A pillbox from WWII on Cley Beach.

I stepped inside one of the derelict pillboxes and imagined what it must have been like to be stationed there, scanning the gray sea for signs of the enemy.

Looking out a firing slot from inside one of the pill boxes.

Walking the stony beach I shuddered to think about trying to come ashore here as an invading soldier; how the stones would be shattered into millions of rocky shards with each impact of a bullet or artillery shell. It would have been a deadly bit of work.


There are places where the shingle dunes have been invaded, however—by the encroaching sea. Where the dunes have been overcome by waves, the stones are fanned out by the passing water yielding up a glimpse of the sea through the gap.

BOTB standing on the stony beach with Cley in the background. Photo by David Tipling.

Visiting Cley was lifer experience for me. I'd read about this legendary birding spot in various books and magazines, I'd heard about it from my British birding friends, and I'd even been invited to visit. So I readily took up my friend David Tipling's offer of a place to stay and a Cley birding trip following the British Birdwatching Fair.

Tomorrow I'll tell you about birding at Cley.

Scenes from the Bird Fair

When you arrive at the British Birdwatching Fair, which is as close to a Woodstock for Birders as anything in the world, you are directed into one of several car parks. These fill up quickly, as shown above, just an hour after the gates opened on Friday. Two things amazed me about the car parks at the BirdFair (as it's called for short): One, I couldn't believe how MANY people attend this annual event—more than 25,000 this year! Two: I was astounded that all of these people know how to drive safely on THE WRONG SIDE OF THE ROAD!


Just outside the entrance gates, the seed trucks stand by, sides splitting with tons (or tonnes) of seed waiting to be loaded into cars. You can buy your seed inside at one of the seed-selling booths (or stalls), take your receipt out to the seed truck and the jolly seedman will load your purchase into your car.

Once inside the gates, you notice many large white tents (called marquees). Inside, the marquees are teeming with people, like a beehive of bird watchers.

Among the special offerings at the Bird Fair is a quiz-show-style competition called Bird Brain, where some of the UK's leading birders and personalities compete up on stage, like a game show. The Bird Brain tent was filled to capacity for each round.

Over along the water that gives Rutland Water its name is the Optics Marquee, home to displays of the worlds leading binoculars and spotting scopes for birders. This marquee has grown over the years, and spawned some babies: a special marquee for retailers, and another for cameras and digiscoping gear.

Seeing all the new optics was enjoyable, but my favorite thing was getting my Zeiss 8x Victories cleaned by an expert optics technician. These two guys sat there all weekend cleaning Zeiss after Zeiss, inside and out. They did things to binoculars that made me feel light-headed—like taking out the lenses and swabbing out the optical tubes. And they did this while people waited!


I'm thinking that the cleaning did me some good because just two days later I spotted a fairly rare bird—one that got the local rarity hotline jumping. More on that in a future post.

Across the central path from the main marquees is the food court, where everyone ends up sooner or later. In fact, each time I wanted to try to find someone in particular, I went to the food and beverage area and looked around. I usually found them or they found me. And if not, I just waited, like a spider waits for a fly, and before long, here came my friend or colleague.

Over at the food court you could buy a wide variety of food and foodlike things. Shown above is the Traditional English Breakfast: Fried egg, fried whole tomato, fried sausage, fried mushrooms, fried pieces of country-cured bacon, and baked beans (unfried). Next to it is a cup of coffee-like liquid used to wash down the Traditional English Breakfast. I found that this worked better for me than Traditional English Breakfast Tea.

Tomorrow: visiting the Philippines in England.

The Bird Fair Mural

During the Bird Fair many of the artists who are here displaying and selling their work participate in the Great Mural Project. They each paint a bird or something on the giant mural, which has had a background painted in. The mural is reproduced on cards, which are sold to raise money for conservation. When the mural depicts the birds of a specific region, ecosystem, or country, it is donated to that place to be used as a fundraiser and to be displayed to raise awareness.

This year's mural depicted the birds of Rutland Water, the Leicestershire and Rutland Wildlife Trust reserve where the Bird Fair is held each year. Here are a few images of the mural being painted over the weekend.

The first few birds are painted in on the mural.

And then a few more artists add their contributions.

And a few more....


Soon the mural begins to look like a more complete work.


Chris Rose working on his grebe for the mural, mixing colors, adding shadows on the water.

Darren Rees added a peregrine falcon zooming upward over the scene.

It's a nice diversion from the Bird Fair to watch the artists create birds on the mural. At times there are three or four birds being painted by as many artists. The mural is just one of many things that make this event so interesting, successful, and world famous.