Dipped another Greenish Warbler

With no fewer than five Greenish Warblers scattered along the north Norfolk coast yesterday and with me having never seen one I hatched a plan last night to give it a go and set off to arrive for first light this morning. I stopped at north pools in Wells and walked down the track to scope finding a year tick with two Wood Sandpipers on view and in good company too with Garganey, Green Sandpiper, Greenshank and Spoonbill the best of the offering. A Lesser Whitethroat popped up too on my way back to the car.

The view over north pools from the car park

It was now 8am and none of yesterdays Greenish had been reported so I had to make a start somewhere and chose the campsite at Stiffkey. I walked for a mile or so finding only Lesser Whitethroat of note before heading back to the old sewage works for a while. At 9.15am I got news that a Greenish had been seen at the Dell in Wells woods and by 10am I'd paid the car parking and was walking down to the dell with the hundreds of beach goers.  On arrival all seemed well with news that the Greenish was doing a circuit with the large tit flock and would be round again soon. My mood changed two hours in when I hadn't even seen a Blue Tit let alone a large flock. I started to search further afield finding a minimum of four Pied Flycatchers in the Dell before finding out that the Greenish had been "reported" down the track near the meadow. I told a few others of the news and we started searching again finding a tit flock in the hawthorns by the meadow. The flock contained Chiffchaff, Willow Warblers, Lesser Whitethroat but only a few Blue Tits. A guy next to me played the call of the Greenish and a bird popped up and quickly flew away, this was called as Greenish but for me it was far to quick I couldn't get any detail on it. We tried to relocate this bird but failed and after four hours of searching I conceded and left for home.

The dip was compounded by news at 4.09pm that Holme had a Greenish in the car park this morning but for some reason whoever saw it decided not to put out news until the end of the day. I also noticed that one was reported today as seen on Sunday in Hemsby and a Sardinian Warbler was also reported today as seen at Winterton on Sunday carrying on this recent trend of late news.

Year list now 247