With the weather remaining unseasonably hot, Saturday mornings ringing session was packed in early, with the first nets being taken down around 10:45, allowing us to leave the Coastal Park before 12:00, at least an hour earlier than normal. The decision to operate with fewer nets (9 rather than the normal 16) proved a wise decision, with the mornings total a meagre 20 birds, more than half of which were in the first net round. Having booked onto the Eccles ringing course this coming weekend (Oct 7th-10th) it was off to Ingoldisthorpe, just a couple of miles inland from Snettisham, where I stayed until gone 14:00 to practice data entry on IMPR with my ringing trainer. Once back at the bungalow, I contemplated a walk towards the direction of the reserve, but decided on a shorter route across the back of Ken Hill marsh, due to the afternoon heat.
You can therefore imagine my reaction to hearing the news, Monday morning, that the Sandhill Crane had been watched at Snettisham 13:00 Saturday afternoon, on the mud opposite the Coastal Park. Quite why the news from Rimac took 6 hours to emerge (lets wait till its dark... Cheers!) I have no idea, but its pretty safe to say that events would have created a very different picture. Any normal day and we would have still been in the Coastal Park when the bird was seen... though being just a few hundred yards away, knowing nothing about it, and missing it would have been even more devastating. Perhaps things turned out OK then?? Maybe if I keep telling myself that, then it wont be so bad....
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