East Anglia Holiday - Day 10

The last day of our trip consisted of a visit to Wicken Fen, close to our B&B accommodation. By now the heat wave was on and the air had become quite humid so even with a 9am start at the reserve it was very quickly oppressive. By 10am the hides were unusable as hey had the effect of concentrating the heat and with no breeze they had no ventilation. We heard a couple of Cetti’s at the reserve but no sightings.

The second hide we checked out was opposite this small island and the group of Grey Herons, some of whom were cooling themselves already:
















The next hide we stopped at probably faces a pool most of the year, but this summer it is a shallow mud scrape, being used by these ponies to try and cool down:















I wonder how they coped as when we left it was already 29 degree and it hit 33 degrees that afternoon. Finally having decided to stick to just the inner loop of the reserve we saw this Juvenile Barn Swallow (note the distinctive yellow bib - that'll be a dark red bib when he 'grows up').

















So headed home, we'd walked 72 miles and seen plenty of new birds and some very attractive parts of this country. Our next job is to update the bird list and UK count... (152!) but we will definately be heading back to both Norfolk and Suffolk this winter, and might just squeeze in a long weekend in autumn.