There were half a dozen observers there when I arrived early afternoon on Friday ... the bird had apparently been seen half an hour earlier but nobody present had actually seen it ...
... the word was that it favoured a sloping post near some tall phragmites ... there was nothing to see across the scrubby grassland as we scanned around ... people wandered up and down the lane ... then wandered off and were replaced by other hopefuls ... some searched the sloping ground behind us on the advice of one information service ( but 'up the slope ' sounded suspiciously like a corruption of the 'sloping post' ) ...
... we turned with our backs to the sharp showers as they piled in on the brisk wind ... and searched again ...
... after three hours and half a dozen changes of company I switched from scanning with bins , back to my scope that I'd left trained on the sloping post - and the bird was perched, motionless, near the bottom of the post !! it was like a halluciation, but no, it was real !! ... the three other people there all saw the bird well despite the grazing cattle wandering annoyingly in front of it ... it dropped to the nearby grass, but still in view ... and then was gone, deep into the vegetation ...
... despite the relatively brief showing, the image of the bird remains clear and seems a very good fit with the features of stejnegeri that I was familiar with from the late Martin Garner's Birding Frontiers book ... certainly a bird of eastern origin and very different from our own hibernans ... I understand that a faecal sample has been obtained ... the DNA should reveal all ...
Around dawn the next day some seawatching at Titchwell was on the cards ... the tide was in ...
... Pomarine Skuas were trickling through ... the occasional one was close in ...
... an owl appeared just over the horizon and headed straight for land, seemingly gaining a lot of height as it did so ...
... then another ... they were called as Short-eared Owls but the images of these very distant birds seems to suggest Long-eared Owl ...
... a magical experience watching these birds making landfall ... how far had they come ?
... more Poms and then a tight flock of 6 Bonxies and more singles ...
Kittiwakes piled by with encouraging numbers of first-winter birds ...
... the saltmarsh was inundated and Brents swam by ...
... and flew overhead in groups as Marsh Harriers quartered the distant marshes ...
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