Lakenheath Fen...

The bird-watching has been a mite disappointing, mostly due to the unseasonal weather. I was waiting for something to happen and, today, it did. I spent the morning at another RSPB reserve, Lakenheath Fen. I heard a song thrush singing from a stand of poplar trees; for the first time this year the song seemed amplified, expanded. Not just louder, but clearer, more penetrating. I don’t know whether this has anything to do with woodland acoustics, or whether (the more likely option) it’s just the thrush putting in a bit more effort to attract a mate.

I spent some time gazing out over a stretch of reed-fringed water, just enjoying the unaccustomed sunshine, the piercing light and the cumulus clouds stacked up like scatter cushions. I didn’t really care if I saw any birds or not; it was just a good place to be, with a few birders to chat to. A pair of great crested grebes performed their mating rituals. A coot chased a canada goose away. A kestrel hovered. Cetti's warblers sang from scrubland. A heron landed in the shallows. A marsh harrier glided over the reedbeds.

Another bird flew towards me; at first I thought it was a second marsh harrier, but it turned out to be a bittern: a bird so shy and retiring that a lot of people who have heard them ‘booming’ have never actually seen one. They tend to hide in the reeds (for which their plumage is perfect camouflage). Bitterns are not good fliers; this one battled with the wind, head hunched into its chest, but still managed to circle the pool three times, before diving into the reeds. Whenever I think about a bittern in future, it won’t be a picture from a book; it will be the bittern I saw today.

I sat with another guy who looked happy to stare vacantly into the middle distance, on a pleasantly warm April day. We agreed that we weren’t at the zoo, wandering listlessly from cage to cage, enclosure to enclosure, and that what’s needed, in a search for birds, is patience and stoicism. At that moment a pair of cranes flew over. I’ve never seen cranes before (not this side of the Channel, anyway), but they were unmistakable, flying with neck and legs outstretched. What a sight! Apparently, there are a couple of pairs at Lakenheath; one day, perhaps, they may breed here. So within five minutes I’d seen a heron, a bittern and two cranes.

I called in, later in the day, to another small reserve, near Weeting, run by the Norfolk Naturalist Trust, in the hope of seeing stone curlews: another extremely shy and retiring bird (and, like the bittern, perfectly camouflaged for its breeding territory: not reedbeds, but stoney fields). Modesty prevents me from reporting who it was that finally saw the first stone curlew. Although I’d never seen them before, they are as unmistakable as the cranes. That’s two new birds for me in the course of a few hours. And yet the high point of the day may have been the song thrush; it was like hearing a soloist in a cathedral.

Stone curlew (pic by Frank Vassen, Belgium)...