Just Pottering Around – Sunday 14^th September

We decided just to have a look around our local area for a few hours. We made our way to The Arms, Bodney, the only thing we saw was a Migrant Hawker, a magnificent looking Dragonfly but it didn’t stop still enough for us to get a decent shot of it. Making our way down towards the Watton Road we did come across one small flock of small birds but it was highly mobile and eluded all our attempts to identify any of them.

Stopping at the bridge over Watton Brook on the Cressingham Road we saw Pheasants, Partridges, Rooks and Jan saw a Jay. There certainly weren’t as many birds as there usually are in this location but I did manage to get some footage of a juvenile Goldfinch on a Teasel.

Juvenile Goldfinch On A Teasel

 We decided to go to the Ford at Hilborough, not so much that we hoped for a repeat of Friday’s fantastic sightings but more for the fact that we could have our coffee in relative peace.

At first our peace and quiet at the Ford was lovely. Bearing in mind that this is just a small lane that leads down to the Ford a car pulled up right beside us effectively stopping us from turning around. At first the couple stayed in their car then an elderly man got out of the car and wandered past us, without talking, down to the bridge over the river. While this was happening a woman got out of the car and got some folding chairs out, walked past us without saying a word, and then placed them just in front of us after banging them and making sure they were opened properly. The man came back to the chairs and they both sat down between the Ford and us and they both went to sleep! We thought C’est la vie (French – That’s life) but we thought we’d stay there a little bit longer. The man eventually got up and shuffled back to the car. I couldn’t resist it, so I said: “Do you come here often?” He replied, “Yes, quite often.” I said to him: “Have you ever seen much here?” He sort of thought about it for a bit and said: “Not much.” I then told him what we’d seen on Friday evening, two Otters, a Kingfisher and two Grey Wagtails. Again he thought about it for a while and muttered: “Wagtails,” and got back into the car. Anyway, we thought we’d continue to persevere when another car turned and parked behind the other one and a woman got out with her Labrador and Springer and walked past us, she did acknowledge us and then walked with her dogs right across the Ford. We then came to the conclusion that there wasn’t any point in staying here so Jan reversed uphill to get out of the Lane. If you knew Jan as well as I do, you would know that she isn’t very keen on reversing so it quite something for her to do that. I’ve no doubt I’ll get a telling off for putting that in our blog! Needless to say, we didn’t see anything at the Ford.

We decided to try Smugglers Road, we saw lots of Rooks, a Magpie, a Jay and lots of Wood Pigeons on the field but not much else until we came back up the road to go home, we saw a flock of about half a dozen birds but we only saw two close to identify them; a Yellowhammer and a juvenile Greenfinch.

There was a definite Autumnal feel to the air. We travelled home via Threxton and saw one Hare and three Rabbits in one field and a couple more in another field. We managed to get a short video of one of the Hares, which you can see on our YouTube Channel.

A Hare Watching Us

I don’t know if you watch Countryfile on BBC 2 but this week’s edition was about Norfolk and in particular there was a section on STANTA, the M.O.D. Stanford Training Area around which we do a lot of our local Nature watching.

Keep your eyes peeled and good (peaceful) spotting.