Jeepers Creeper!

Taking TOIL from work this afternoon, Ricky F and I headed straight down to Landguard after hearing of a Short- toed Treecreeper being trapped early in the morning within the compound. It took a full 1 hour and 20 minutes to get there in the busy afternoon traffic, gone are the days (lower speed limit, increased traffic) when you could get there legally in about an hour! It had been released at Icky ridge and we arrived there at 2.50pm. It hadn't been seen since 2pm when it had been re-trapped within the compound of Landguard Fort and subsequently re-released back onto Icky ridge.

After 40 minutes of checking out the trees along Icky ridge with barely 20 birders present, on the narrow track nearest the compound, a guy indicated he had the bird and we quickly ran over to the spot just a yard from the car park which was directly opposite the compound and the entrance to Landguard Common. The bird had been seen scaling the trunk of a base of a bush and I saw something, a bird, fly left behind a concrete basal post. Sure enough the bird scaling the trunk of the bush just 30 feet away was the excellent Short- toed Treecreeper, showing very extensive buffy flanks, its most obvious ID feature, as well as showing a slightly longer bill and a hint of a white supercilia behind the eye (not in front of it), we couldn't quite make out the wing pattern though. We watched it for a couple of minutes before at 3.30pm, it flew over our heads and back into the compound. A real mega for Suffolk, a first for Suffolk and it brought up all the 3's in bingo parlance, my 333rd species seen in Suffolk.

At Holton disused airfield not much seen there save for 15 Fieldfare which flew over north "chacking."