Nightingale, Salthouse Heath, 1st May 2014

Having woken early – at 4.50am to be precise, I thought I’d make the best of it by going to Salthouse to see if I could hear Nightingale – a difficult species to pin down in Norfolk. I arrived on the heath soon after it got light and as I pulled the car off the road I immediately heard a Nightingale blasting it out! Hampered by the early morning mist and the fact that these birds like to sing from deep cover, I set about trying to see it. Eventually it showed briefly in the more open canopy of a birch tree and I managed to get a couple of record shots – taken at 6400 iso and 30th sec!

Nearby another Norfolk ‘year tick’ – Lesser Whitethroat

and down on the coast, a fine male Wheatear