Multimedia marsh tit

Or: The Loneliness of the Long Distance Blogger

I have a dark secret that I’ve been keeping from you, loyal marshtitters. Sometimes I suffer from blog-envy. Sometimes I look at the blogs of friends, colleagues and mortal enemies, so shiny and pretty and full of interesting pictures, and I feel ashamed of my little marsh tit. Poor imageless, wordy little marsh tit. You see I’m a dyed-in-the-wool non-photographer. Mention ISOs or depths of field and my little eyes glaze over and I start thinking about what I’m going to have for supper. And I’m not much of a cook either.

Weighed down by the dreariness of my marsh tit I turned, as so often in times of gloom, to my great friend DTH. We left with the lark (two literal larks as it happens: a woodlark over Salthouse Heath and lots of skylarks) for a morning of watching wildlife and putting the blog to rights. We went first to Salthouse where the aforementioned lark (you remember, the one we were up with) was over the road. A short distance further nine ring ouzels were over the road too, tack-ing loudly as they flew west. Willow warblers were in song, and chiffchaffs.

But it was gloomy and grey and wet and so too was my mood.

We drove the short distance to Kelling and began the walk to the Water Meadows. Along the lane here a blackcap was singing his happy song, in exactly the spot where DTH had filmed a singing male blackcap, as I stood watching, a couple of years ago.

DTH: I tell you what. I’ve just started uploading my videos to my YouTube feed. Why don’t you embed my videos in your blog? That’ll liven it up a bit.

Marsh tit: Dave, what a brilliant idea. Thank you.

We walked a little further, to the pond, where swallows, sand martins and a single house martin swept and swooped over the cold grey water. Here we bumped into our friend Moss Taylor, just back from a long trip around the coasts of South America and buzzing with stories of albatrosses, prions and petrels. As we stood and chatted in the drizzle and the mud, meadow pipits and linnets passed overhead, lisping and muttering as they went.

We wandered back up the muddy lane, following the footprints of last night’s badger. Though I’d dearly like a badger on my list, just seeing a badger’s prints in Norfolk is a delight. As a child in North Norfolk this would have been unimaginable. It's wonderful to have them back. But enough cheeriness: back to my blog-induced gloom.

We hopped next to Cley where I had a meeting with my friend, generous, insightful yoga teacher Susanna Scamell. I confess I’ve been keeping another secret from you: I’m also a yoga teacher. And Susanna has asked me to help teach an upcoming workshop. We nattered and chatted over coffee and tea, gazed out over the marsh (grazing greylags, flap-wing lapwings, harried harriers and mate-minded mallards), and made a plan for our workshop.

Time to rejoin DTH in the hides. As I did so I rescued a brown-lipped snail Cepaea nemoralis from certain death under a birder's boot on the board-walk (appropriately enough as the genetics of this highly variable snail were the subject of DTH’s Ph.D. thesis), I admired the sharp green new growth of wild celery, and I came across a singing Cetti’s warbler in a tangle of bramble.

Marsh tit: Dave, I’ve just seen my first Cetti’s warbler of the year.

DTH: Oh, I took a photo of one here the other day. Do you want to post it on your blog?

Marsh tit: Dave, that’s excellent. Thanks.

DTH: By the way, there was a little gull feeding in front of Bishop’s while you were gone.

Marsh tit: There it is now. Shall we go and see it?

We saw it. DTH photographed it. Doesn’t it look lovely, sooty underwings and all? (Commercial Break: more of Dave’s photos of wildlife in Norfolk and all over the world may be found here).

What's more, we saw a parachuting sedge warbler, also the first one on which I’ve set eyes in 2012, four spoonbills, an adult Mediterranean gull, a tight flock of bar-tailed godwits and a sky-full of marsh harriers. We had lunch at DTH’s, where the garden was busy with bramblings in the full eye-thump of spring plumage and an exquisitely chestnut tawny mining bee Andrena fulva buzzed past between visits to nectar-laden flowers.

Do you know, I mused to myself over beans on toast, with the help of my friends this blog may yet look pretty too.


New this morning

	Birds
446	Cetti’s warbler	Cettia cetti
447	little gull	Larus minutus
448	sedge warbler	Acrocephalus schoenobaenus

2012 Totals

Mammals: 55

Birds: 448

Reptiles: 12

Amphibians: 6

Fish: 3

J. K. Galbraith said, ‘anyone who says he finds writing easy is either a terrible writer or a terrible liar.’ I do not find witing easy, nor is application one of my outstanding qualities. Like a twittering bird, my mind too often flits from twig to twig – from one fascinating subject to another.

Peter Scott

Observations of Wildlife

For a writer, nothing is ever as bad as it is for other people because, however dreadful, it may be of use.

Alan Bennett

Untold Stories