I've walked around Whitlingham Lane Country Park on many occasions: often just for a Winter's stroll, sometimes for an unusual bird - Black-necked Grebe, Coues's Redpoll, Smew and Scaup spring to mind. However, I've always avoided the site at weekends and during holiday periods, because I'm not keen on sharing my birding with pond-yacht sailors, wind surfers, kayakers, dog walkers and hundreds of cyclists! Nevertheless, knowing how highly the Lansdells and James Emerson think of the place (and lured by reports of a few lingering Black Terns) Linda and I took a walk all the way around the Great Broad this morning.
Even just after eight the car park was nearly full, but, despite the crowds, we managed to see Reed, Sedge and Cetti's Warblers, Whitethroats, Blackcaps, Garden Warblers, Great Spotted and Green Woodpeckers and a Nuthatch. No Black Terns, but several Common Terns, a Marsh Harrier and my first Common Sandpiper of the year. Plenty of all three Hirundines skimmed the surface, while overhead around twenty Swifts were hawking for insects.
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