Westerly winds return

28th September The long awaited visit by my friend Dave Gandy who is now living in Thailand (see Bangkok city birding blog).We had been planning our search for rare birds for months.

The day arrived but so did the start of West winds which made birding hard work. We knew it was an 'all or nothing day' and we were right!

 As we walked towards the Point 4 Spoonbills were the highlight and we reminisced about the previous rarities we had seen along the way. A couple of Song Thrushes (I also heard the first Redwings over my house before we set off), a few Skylark and Mipits were all we could find. At the lupins a pale Sylvia looked good for the Barred which I first found over a week ago in the nearby sueda... We waited and after about 45 minutes what may have been a second Sylvia flew closer to Dave's position and he saw it was a Garden Warbler. So probably a few different birds hiding out in there as I see the Barred was still present by the weekend

 On the way back a few Stonechat, 1-2 Wheatear was all we could manage to strain out of poor migrant hunting conditions!

 Seeing as in the past Dave has always been jammy and coincided his Norfolk visits with days when great birds have turned up (Black Lark being the best), I guess the lucky run was not going to last... Still a pleasant day out and good to catch up.