Norfolk Birds Workshop results

Hi all!

As you may know myself alongside Stuart White (Norfolk Birder supremo) ran our Norfolk Wild Birds tour a few weeks ago.

It was a great success combining field-craft skills, photography and digital workflow. My luck of having wonderful guests continues as we had a great selection of people join us!

The star attraction of the weekend was the unbelievable Knot roosts at Snettisham. This is one of the sites I always seem to be very lucky with as every time I have visited it the numbers are staggering!

It was an early start for our first morning (after a very pleasant, relaxed meet and greet afternoon/evening with the group) and yielded some great results. Check out all those birds!!!!!!

These huge numbers really allow you to try and be creative and is a challenge to focus yourself with the sheer scale of it all, similar to working with the Wildebeest crossings on our African tours! Out on the flats we wait patiently until the tide or other factors cause them to up en mass! The light was a little drab this morning which lends itself to black and white as you can see!

After the flocks made their way directly over out heads (with a fantastic sound) we made our way into the hides..

The beauty in motion when they take off at once is really something to behold and always fascinates me as to how they co-ordinate it all.

The photographer and twitcher numbers at the site were good with plenty of fancy kit on display! Rather too much chimping going on as usual though, but our group on the other hand were great and stayed focused! I saw a few other people missing take offs as they were studying the images they can easily look at back at home!

We then moved on to other pastures. Stuart’s knowledge of the area and activities is crucial as the warm, calm weather preceding the weekend means we have to work harder to find species (to cut a long story short, previous bad weather brings more birds to us!). Again some more b&w for you. I am really getting into form and shape recently for which monochrome really allows you to work well..

And at the end of a long day we had our showers and met back up at the bar for some digital workflow tutorials and then drinks and food!

Back for the next morning, the weather was much more promising and we are our way back to the Knots as their numbers at the moment are simply amazing and knot (HAHAH!) to be missed!

The colours in the sky were amazing and this time colour really tell the story of the early light vs yesterdays B&W images..

After a short while a Periguin started hunting and this causes the flocks to gather and weave in elaborate shapes as they all panic.

Wonderful! A real treat for them to be putting on such a show.

On with our day we tried out luck at various sites. The very harsh Winter we have had did no favours for the Barn Owls which have significantly dropped in numbers around Norfolk unfortunately.

As we are dealing with wild birds, we never know what we are going to find or where! Our exploration of a small outcrop area found this obliging chap and with a little subtle field work we were able to get very close..

And there we go! Some of the highlights from the trip. I used some of the time whilst teaching the group to setup and take time-lapse and HD video of some of the events above, so check back soon for some interesting stuff! More pictures once I have made my way through the never ending image queue.

Thanks again to the group for being such sports and to you all for reading and super mega thanks to Stuart White for making the tour possible, a real treat to work with as always!

Back with you soon!

Richard.