All The Young Dudes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJ6T9uYImnQ

 

In Bill Oddie's Little Black Bird Book a Dude is described thus "The dude is not into discomfort. He potters out after breakfast, stays in posh hotels and waits for the sun." I am getting much more dude these days and this is exemplified by the time it takes me to get around to looking for rare birds that are hanging around.  Over Christmas we stayed in Whitby for a couple of nights and it took until the last morning to make the 15 minute walk onto the cliff top to look for the wintering Desert Wheatear.

Months after their discovery I managed to see the Parrot Crossbills at Santon Downham a couple of weeks ago, well worth the wait but very dude.  I joined Rich and Ben for a day out, and we hit the Brecks.

  

 

 

I'm reading Nick Bakers book on rewilding yourself, quite dude again, and have just read about how to reduce your sonic footstep and improve your fieldcraft.  We were much more social than mindful as we guffawed our way across Santon Warren.  Over the frivolous banter I heard them. A long way off, suggested sound, stopped, silence, a lag period of a 5 seconds or so and then the first fruity calls became audible.  15 or so Crossbills, in chorus, appeared as dots and flew swiftly over and down towards the car park. 

We did take a while to get there, mostly distracted by Ben's detailed account of how he had fantasised our finding of the birds, to more guffawing. When we finally arrived at the car park we did see a female Parrot Crossbill, huge billed, sitting a top a pine.  It was grey and dark but hugely engaging as a view and, oh so quickly, the tree burst into life and the flock took to the wing and left and disappeared into the distance.  We decided to amble down along the river and it wasn't long until we re-found the Crossbills in a tall deciduous tree.  We were able to enjoy them on our lonesome for quite a while as they used this as a vantage point to drop down from into a little straggle of pines where they would snip off a pine cone with that big pair of secateurs and return to the bare branches to work their way in to obtain the seeds. 

 

 

Once they had gorged they moved closer and into some riverside Alders and then tentatively down into a willow tangle overhanging the shallows that allowed them to drink from the Little Ouse.

 



 

 

We left the Crossbills after half an hour and continued our perambulation,  Bramblings, a Merlin and tit flocks kept us amused.  We pottered along to Lynford Arboretum where we enjoyed a couple of Hawfinches in the paddock trees and tangle  and I duded out completely on Marsh Tits and Nuthatches coming down to feed on the seeded bridge.

 

 

 

 

A return to Santon, hoping for seconds on the Crossbills was unsuccessful but we found ourselves joining a small gathering watching a confiding Otter fishing and  running around on the banks. A very pleasant way to finish a very pleasant day, although the sun didn't break the monochrome sky even once.