After a year living in the heat and humidity of Indonesia, Matt Williams is glad to be back home on the coast of Norfolk.
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When we arrived the bare sand dunes were being battered by the gusting south-westerly winds. The clumps of marram grass were being blown flat, like strands of hair combed over on a bald man’s scalp.
The Norfolk coast in England always seems to be windy, and that wind always seems to be bitingly cold, no matter what the weather is doing elsewhere.
In the autumn and winter months North Norfolk becomes a hotbed of bird activity. Geese, ducks and waders arrive en masse from thousands of miles away to spend the winter feeding on the fields and mudflats that will, they hope, remain largely unfrozen in the slightly more hospitable UK climate.
Holkham was where we set our sights. It’s a stretch of beach and mud that is flat, open and endless when the tide is out. It can take a while to walk from the beach’s landward edge to the shoreline. It’s a spot that’s popular with families and dog-walkers, but also draws in crowds of birdwatchers with telescopes and windbreakers.
As we arrived we were greeted by the sounds of pink-footed geese barking to each other. We even saw a few flocks flying in from the sea, just finishing their epic migration from Iceland and Greenland, calling excitedly and in relief as they finally sighted land.
Our target bird for the day was a surf scoter, a black sea duck with an orange bill and a white flash on its neck – a rare vagrant that has been blown off course from the US and across the Atlantic to our shores.
It was in amongst a flock of its cousins, common and velvet scoters. With just binoculars it took us a while to pick it out. Eventually we did though, as, amid the tiny black dots a kilometre away on the sea, we saw one that displayed a distinctive white dot every time it bobbed up from behind the waves.
As I turned around I spotted red kite, a bird of prey, hung in the air over the dunes, its wings stationary, making minor tail adjustments to just float on the strong winds. The bird looked downwards patiently and intently. It might have been searching for carrion such as the fresh corpse of a juvenile gannet we found rotting further down the beach.
Near the shoreline, I happened upon tiny silver birds, sanderlings, which were scurrying and skipping around. They were using their tiny black beak to forensically turn over every piece of rock, seaweed and shell they could find.
But they were skittish and flew off every time I got within photographing distance of them. So instead of chasing them, I lay face down in the mud with my camera and waited until they came to me.
After a while they flew back and began feeding near me, slowly coming closer. Finally, they were within range of my lens, walking within feet of my still body. This provided the opportunity to get some great shots, although it did mean I was cold and soaking wet for the rest of the day.
In mid-afternoon we headed further west along the coast to Titchwell, a large area of reedbeds and open wetlands. Against the setting sun we watched flocks of brent geese returning from feeding on the fields and huge groups of gulls and wading birds – ruffs, godwits, knots and dunlins – gathering to roost.
Marsh harriers, chocolate brown birds of prey with golden crowns were gliding with their wings in a v-shape, dancing together over the golden reedbeds.
And, as we were walking back to the car, we noticed a huge swirling flock of about 2000 starlings painting patterns against the sky with their bodies, like a Pointilist Seurat piece. Suddenly, a bullet of a bird darted over our heads and tore through the flock – a merlin was gunning for the starlings, hoping to pick off a slow and tired bird as an evening meal.
I’ve just spent a year living in the heat and humidity of Indonesia, and I often pined for cold winter days on the Norfolk coast. It’s a time of crisp light, of tough, biting weather, and of spectacular numbers of flocked birds that eke a living from beneath the wet mud of fields and estuaries. I can’t help but feel in awe of their endurance when a couple of hours exposed to the elements out there chills me to the bones.
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Photo: vastateparksstaff/Flickr