Three in a day! Twice!

29/7/06 Titchwell RSPB Leaders; James and Simeon
We grabbed the easy opportunity to go to Titchwell as this is one of my favourite places to find good birds. We looked at the record book and decided to spend most of our six hours at the sea. But first we stopped off at the fresh marsh and saw two Spoonbills (see gallery), then we stopped off at the tidal lagoon and saw a juvenile Arctic Skua (see gallery) that we got some record shots of. Finally we got to the beach. Nothing. Except a few Sandwich Terns and Common Scoters, but apart from that...nothing! We were still pleased with the Skua and Spoonbills. We decided to go back to the visitor centre, have lunch and work our way, hide to hide, back up to the beach again. We did this with some success (bird wise) picking up Wood Sandpiper (see gallery), Water Rail, Yellow Wagtail, Marsh Harrier, four Common Sandpiper and two beautiful Common Snipes (see gallery) from Island Hide and some record shots of the Spoonbills from Parinder Hide. At last we got to the beach again with our hopes raised for the seawatch. It was a lot more productive with a few Eider, Common Terns, Little Terns and two more Arctic Skuas mobbing Sandwich Terns. One of them was a dark morph Arctic which can be told from Great Skua because the white patch on the wings on Great Skuas are very prominent. On dark morph Arctic they are barely visible. Another way to tell them is that Great Skuas have a much heavier and slower flight. All in all it had been a very pleasing day! The title is so because I got three Arctic Skuas in a day and three yearers in a day.