12th August 2024 – Kelling Quag, Norfolk

A hot weather plume was forecast for today and so we planned only to do a short walk in the morning.

We drove along the coast to Kelling, a small village just east of Cley Next The Sea.

We stopped first for a coffee at The Old Reading Room Gallery and Tea Room in Kelling. This excellent café and quant second hand bookshop and antiques shop is run by very friendly staff. They not only kindly allowed us to park in their car park whilst we did our walk but also showed us where it would be best to park for the shade.

That was most valuable advice because it was very hot, even by lunch time, and our car was still relatively cool for the return journey (only after we had had some lunch there too!)

Kelling Quag is a patch of water in an area also known as Kelling Water Meadows. It’s just a short walk north towards the sea along a lane from opposite the Old Reading Room.

There were plenty of butterflies and dragonflies to keep me busy.

It was difficult to see the Quag from the lane as the bushes are very high but through the first gap we had reasonable views of 2 great white egrets.

We walked on a little and had better views round the corner and plenty of birds overhead too.

From around the corner, as well as the great white egrets, we could make out little egrets, a grey heron, a greenshank and a green sandpiper (if my ID skills are up to it, but I could well be wrong). I also had difficulty in deciding if it was a curlew or a whimbrel which flew over, but so too did the Merlin app. I would go for a whimbrel as the bill seemed rather short for a curlew. Second thoughts – juvenile curlew.

There was another scrape of water beyond the Quag but it was, by now, too hot for us.

In the afternoon temperatures were over 30 and so I was happy to sit and edit my photos.