After ten days of no internet, we finally got our service restored at lunchtime today. How have we become so dependant on  something we understand so little about (I’m speaking for myself here of course) and have even less control over?? It’s a long story, which I won’t bore you with, but it was only when we demanded the code to change provider that TalkTalk finally got their act together, stopped blaming everyone else and fixed the problem – in two hours!

Anyway, enough of the whinging, here is a catch-up blog of birding stuff over the past week. On Friday we called in at Titchwell in the hope of ‘ticking up’ the Spotted Crake that had been there for several days and which was showing well, if only occasionally. It was the usual story, we arrived about ten minutes after it had been seen, I glimpsed the bird very briefly heading into the reeds and then it was two hours before the thing showed itself again! After a much appreciated late lunch we headed towards Cley/Salthouse, where a Purple Heron had been reported earlier in the day. We dropped into the NWT Centre to ask for an update and were told that it was last reported in a ditch, south of Arnold’s Marsh. We parked up and yomped down East Bank, where the couple of birders present said they hadn’t seen it. I turned and looked over towards the coast road to see a group of distant birders looking intently through their scopes at something in the vicinity of Pope’s Marsh! I’d just started yomping back towards the road again when the bird obligingly flew up, across the marsh, along the single bank and dropped down in the reed bed between North Scrape and Pat’s Pool. Brief, but very acceptable views of a quite rufous looking juvenile.

Spotted Crake, heads for cover

‘ Excuse me Ma’am, have you seen the Purple Heron?’ – ‘Yes, it’s behind you..!’