First visit to Salthouse this year

Having decided on Salthouse as my patch for Patch Work Challenge 2014 I thought I ought to make the effort and get down there to kick off my list. After another lazy start Ness and I parked up by the duck pond and headed down to the beach car park...well simply 'beach' would be more accurate.

This is the view from near the end of the beach road, with the car park to the right

The emergency telephone

Looking back across the car park area towards Walsey Hills and Little Eye. I doubt many of us will be photographing waders here this year!

Picked up the typical easy species on the exposed marsh, although numbers seemed down from previous years - I wonder how the salt will impact the flora and fauna over the coming year and therefore the bird species present. For example, I doubt there are many small mammals, fish or amphibians left alive on the marsh, so I don't expect Barn Owl to be hunting.

There was a nice Red-throated Diver just off the beach at Gramborough Hill, showing very well (don't let the rubbish photo fool you) and a couple of Guillemot flew past but little else moving over the sea. The big surprise were the new 'cliffs'!

The new 'cliffs' at Gramborough Hill

We stopped off briefly at The Quag to look for the Richard's Pipit but it had dropped into the deep grass area on Kelling Hards, so didn't give it long (I am probably going to regret that...). The area is still a mess after the storm with masses of reeds and bits of Cley NWT's North hide scattered around. The water meadows were devoid of birds.

In all, the walk was 2.5 miles and I only managed 38 species (40 points):

Pink-footed Goose

Wren

Coot

Moorhen

Black-headed Gull

Herring Gull

Mallard

Egyptian Goose

Lapwing

Great Black-backed Gull

House Sparrow

Wigeon

Redwing

Redshank

Rook

Jackdaw

Common Gull

Ruff

Dunlin

Turnstone

Starling

Meadow Pipit

Brent Goose

Red-throated Diver

Guillemot

Teal

Goldfinch

Curlew

Canada Goose

Carrion Crow

Chaffinch

Greylag Goose

Mute Swan

Robin

Shoveler

Stock Dove

Woodpigeon

Black-tailed Godwit