Nightingale Wood...

Busy taking, editing and uploading pix. I’ve sorted out an itinerary for the next few days, including bluebell woods and nature reserves. Still drawing a blank on nightingales, except for listening to a two-part drama on the radio: Nightingale Wood by Stella Gibbons (who’s best known for Cold Comfort Farm). Her dialogue is wonderfully waspish. In one scene two characters are talking while a nightingale is singing in the background!

Pollarded tree and River Stour...

The river, a few minutes later, looking the other way... and an obliging mallard...

Flatford...

Stayed in Maningtree last night, next to a pub where they were showing the Liverpool game. Man City capitulated meekly, the previous night, against Real Madrid, but Liverpool went one better: beating Villarreal and setting up a Europa League final against Seville. Liverpool ‘went for it’ from the moment the ref blew his whistle, and never let Villarreal settle.

This morning I took pix around Flatford Mill. The National Trust have tried to keep the view much as Constable saw it, when he painted the Hay Wain. Willy Lott’s House is still there, and the River Stour; what Constable wouldn’t have seen is a National Trust shop selling expensive tat. It’s a pleasant spot, especially early in the morning, before people have arrived. I may go back in early evening, when the sun will have moved round…

Paths converge on Flatford...

Willy Lott's Cottage...

The cottage... at twilight...

Acoustics...

Had another very enjoyable day at Minsmere yesterday. It wasn’t really a whole day, but I was settled into the Bittern Hide by 7am, so it just felt like a whole day. I enjoyed the first two hours best, when you could feel you had the reserve to yourself. Actually, I felt like an intruder. There were things going on around the salt-flats that didn’t really need an audience.

I spent a bit of time away from the wetlands, spotting blackcaps and whitethroats in full song. Birdsong, in May, seems amplified: not an echo, but a doubling of effort and result. The acoustics have changed somehow; it’s like hearing birdsong in the vaulted space of a cathedral, instead of an oak woodland. I saw - and heard - sedge warblers, perched on a single reed-stem and swaying in the breeze. Reed Buntings too… and stonechats… and linnets… and wheatears. But no nightingales…

Minsmere...

Scallop sculpture on the beach at Aldeburgh...

Minsmere...

Arriving at Minsmere in late afternoon, I left the camera behind and had a walk around the reserve with my monocular, spending a bit of time in each of the hides. I couldn’t believe the number of avocets; I must have seen a hundred from just one hide. They’re nesting on the islands. Last year 58 nestlings survived at Minsmere; maybe 2016 will be even better. The birds are fantastic to watch… whether they’re wading, swimming, sitting on eggs or just tear-arsing around the reserve in excitable groups.

Birds spotted this evening include little egret, barnacle goose, shelduck, mallard, gadwall, teal, shoveler, tufted duck, coot, moorhen, oystercatcher, avocet, ringed plover, lapwing, redshank, common sandpiper, curlew, bar-tailed godwit, kittiwake (and other gulls), common tern and sandwich tern (they were pointed out to me). No harriers, or any other birds of prey. Heard a bittern ‘booming’, and sedge warblers calling from the reedbeds. A stonechat sang from gorse bushes.

Staying in Aldeburgh this evening, and will be back to Minsmere tomorrow… with monocular and camera. I’ll hope to spot a stone curlew (they’ve been seen this week).

No nightingales...

Nightingales...

I'm not the only one on a quest to find nightingales this spring.

I slept on Salthouse Heath two nights ago, which represented my first attempt to find nightingales on my tour of Norfolk and Suffolk. The only time I heard nightingales (in England) was here, in a tent, while on a school trip. If there was one nightingale singing that night, there must have been a dozen, and they kept us awake.

My sleep was uninterrupted by nightingales two nights ago, though I met a guy in the morning, with binoculars, who was looking - and listening - for nightingales too. Salthouse Heath remains one of the few places where it's possible to see them... but he'd had no more luck than me...

The wetlands at Titchmarsh RSPB reserve in North Norfolk...

Top of the league...

So Leicester have won the Premier League - demonstrating, against all the odds, that a band of brothers can beat an army of over-paid mercenaries, with egos to match their salaries. It gives hope to those who like football, but who don’t like the idea that only those with deep pockets can compete at the top level. If money is all that matters, then the FA should have bowed to the inevitable and published league tables which ranked clubs in order of their share price.

Everyone (except Spurs fans) seems to be enjoying this unlikely overturning of our footballing universe. It’s like one team has suddenly found a way to defy gravity. Will Leicester sink like a stone next season? Who knows? If the pundits could really see into the future, they would have had a bet on Leicester at the beginning of the season. Anyone who wagered £200 on Leicester to win the league, when the odds were 5,000-1, would now have a million pounds to bank. But no-one saw it coming… which makes the story even better…

Holkham Beach...

Croyland Abbey...

I drove across the Woodhead Pass yesterday, as I took the 'scenic route' south. That same road is impassible today, I hear, due to snow. Strange weather...

Croyland Abbey...