Wildlife

James Lowen

At 12h57, I saw a grey shape coast in from the south, about six metres above the water. Putting my bins up, its languid flight, thick-necked and short-tailed jizz immediately rang alarm bells - it had barely been a month since I was watching this same flight/jizz in Lesvos - so my eyes accelerated to the bird’s head, seeing a neat black cap and stocky, wholly black bill with no yellow tip and obvious black legs. In my head, I screamed ‘Gull-billed Tern!’ According to Stitch, however, I actually stammered something like ‘Err…what?... Is that a Gull-billed Tern?’ before starting to swear. Everyone was on it instantly, and the camera shutters were going as I put the news out.

Minsmere, 20 May (Alan Lewis). Salthouse, 29 May (James Lowen)

BLOG

30 May 2026 Serentickity

Serendipity occasionally strikes when birding. Very occasionally. Yesterday, Mark Pearman (over from Argentina), Richard ‘Stitch’ Johnson and I were meeting up in Norfolk. Stitch and I fancied doing Burnham Overy Dunes, but Mark’s foot had inflated to the size of a small football, so we had to make do with ‘hide birding’. Even Cley’s central hides seemed too far for the Geezer, so we parked at East Bank and sauntered down to Babcock Hide, between Cley and Salthouse, pausing only to admire a larval web of Small Eggar and the first of many Painted Ladies.

I put out another message, hoping to alert birders on the main part of Cley reserve. Fortunately, at 13h04 the bird dropped onto North Scrape, where Steve Gantlett located it, then moved to Pat’s Pool at 13h29. By this point, we were back watching the scrape at Babcock Hide, wondering what would turn up next. The answer was an Osprey flying southwest over Salthouse village, mobbed by Black-headed Gulls, a second male Red-veined Darter and what appeared to be a female Lesser Emperor ovipositing on the scrape itself.

The Cley bird also showed a distinct dusky trailing edge on the right upperwing secondaries (hinting that it might not be fully adult?), but no photo of the 20 May Minsmere bird’s right wing has yet emerged. Moreover, the Cley bird also had a wonky lower edge to the black cap on the right side of the head, at least, giving the impression of a small ‘ear flap’ behind the eye (with thanks to Mike Buckland for discussion on this) - see, for example, Dave's photo; again, there is no image of the 20 May Minsmere bird’s right-hand side.

I say ‘20 May Minsmere’ bird because on 30 May, an adult Gull-billed Tern turned up at Minsmere. A photo by finder Mark Ferris appears to show it to have the same wonky righthand side to the cap as the Cley/Salthouse bird. So these are surely the same bird - but is it the ’20 May Minsmere’ bird returning – or, unlikely as it may seem has the RSPB's flagship reserve had two individuals in ten days?

I put the news out and messaged/called Norwich-based friends Stuart White and Dave Andrews, neither of whom had been able to make the first showing. Sadly the bird flew east at 17h03, spiralling ever higher – before being lost to view behind an inconveniently tall hawthorn bush. We feared that this might cue the bird’s departure from the area, but the fact that it had clearly flown back east from the Blakeney area, without being seen, suggested that it might yet do a U-turn. Dave Andrews, already en route, opted for that possibility and did very well to get a distant view of what he thought was the tern flying distantly west over Salthouse Marshes at 17h57. At 18h20, it was found again on North Scrape where it entertained many a happy local birder until it departed at 20h15.

This was a self-find tick for me, a Cley square tick for pretty much everyone (Steve told me that the last of 12 records were in 2011 - a fly-through - and, before that, 1979!), a presumed county tick for a fair number including me (the last twitchable one was in 2001), and a UK tick for Dave. Less serendipity than serentickity.

There’s an intriguing epilogue. On 20 May, a bird was present for about an hour at Minsmere in Suffolk. Our initial assumption was that the Cley/Salthouse bird would be the same individual. However, comparing Alan Lewis’s picture of the Minsmere bird’s left upperwing (left) with mine of the Norfolk bird (right), it seems that the Cley bird has a strong dark blaze towards the inner primaries – suggesting that it might be a different individual.

We could easily have spent just five minutes in the hide, checked the margins, seen the LRP and Ringo present, admired the Avocets, then hurried off. But because of Mark’s foot, we stayed put, chilling and conversing. After about 45 minutes, I picked up a male Red-veined Darter patrolling the muddy margins. There had been one (perhaps more) at Felbrigg, so with Kelling water meadows being a previous breeding site, I wasn’t overly surprised to see one here. At 12h45, another birder in the hide, Mark Reynolds drew attention to a small wader on the main island frequented by Avocets: a quick look through his scope and… Temminck’s Stint! Within three minutes, the summer-plumaged adult bird flew round the scrape then headed rapidly westwards. Splendid stuff.

Red-veined Darter, Temminck’s Stint, Gull-billed Tern, Osprey, Lesser Emperor – all within an hour, and solely because we were forced to laze in a hide as a result of injury! Serendipity indeed.

Meanwhile, the tern moved between Pat’s and North Scrape until 14h09, when it flew west up Blakeney Point and out of view. The bird’s departure prompted our own, to have a late lunch and celebratory beers at the Dun Cow pub in Salthouse. Given our luck, I suggested that we should sit in the garden and take our optics with us. Mark was happy with good views of Red Kite plus a flyby Spoonbill, while I never get bored with seeing Cattle Egrets (so enjoyed the couple that flew west) – and we all enjoyed the Painted Ladies and Silver Y that were nectaring at the pub garden’s Red Valerian. As we were leaving, at 16h53, I scanned the easternmost Iron Road Pool, which lies northwest of the Dun Cow north of the pub. Borrowing Stitch’s scope to check a Tringa, I found myself looking at the back end of a tern sat on the mud. The bird shifted its head left (to face south) – and I found myself looking at the Gull-billed Tern again! Lightning... twice.

Just as well, because after a single circle of the scrape, the bird headed north-west towards the shingle ridge, before turning west and dropping down low out of sight.