Winter's not so bad after all!

9/12/06 Holme NOA and Tichwell RPSB Leaders: Simeon, Matthew, Connor, James (and Yaseen who is new to birding)
As it was Yaseen's first birding outing, we dropped him in at the deep end with a bit of seawatching (his favourite part of the day strangely) We started at Holme at 10:00 until 11:00, then 11:30 until 12:30; (time spent seawatching). The north - westerlies had pushed loads in and the result was good! 1 Great - Northern Diver, 1 Arctic Skua (chased gulls right over us above the dunes!), 2 drake Goosanders, 3 Red - Breasted Mergansers, 9 Red - Throated Divers of which Yaseen found one, 8 Little Gulls, 35+ Long - Tailed Ducks, 7 Razorbills, 1 Guillemot and other unidentified Auk species, 36 Common Scoters, 500+ Wigeon, a drake Scaup, 14 Eider, 22 Great - Crested Grebes, 5 Slavonian Grebes, 5 Fulmar, 6 Gannets and 2 unidentified Divers that were probably Black - Throated but were too far out to tell! A few goldcrests were in the pines and 1000+ pinkfeet were constantly being spooked from the marsh. Also of note were, 2 Skylarks over the marsh and a single Meadow pipit along the beach.
Then it was on to Titchwell. We failed to get the two Chiffchaffs that had been in the car park, but we did get a male Bullfinch there. The marshes provided a couple of hundred Golden plovers, 7 Avocets and 10 Spotted Redshanks. Then onto the beach. A few more scoters on the sea, but little else. Then we randomly decided to check Thornham Point! It was actually quite good considering the time of year! Birds we saw were; one continental Blackbird, 2 Chiffchaffs, 1 Robin, 1 Dunnock, 1 Magpie, 2 Stonechats, 2 Rock pipits, 1 Pied Wagtail and 15 Meadow pipits. A great first day out for Yaseen and we all thoroughly enjoyed it! Oh yeah we also got a couple of Bearded Tits, Reed Buntings and Cetti's Warblers at Titchwell as well...