When Bee-eaters came to the village
Carol Thornton from the North East Norfolk Bird Club on Norfolk's first breeding Bee-eaters and the club's part in their successful story during the summer of 2022
Three of the adult Bee-eaters at Trimingham, Norfolk (© Mike Edgecombe)
On 5th June 2022, Andrew Chamberlain found himself unexpectedly watching four European Bee-eaters on his patch near the village of Trimingham on the north east Norfolk coast. The word went out, locals quickly came, much oo-ing, ah-ing, discussion and speculation ensued and the birds surprisingly lingered. Within a couple of days potential breeding behaviour was observed as these stunning birds started to show an interest in the sandy face of a small quarry and by 9th June they were making exploratory investigations and excavations. Excitement grew at the possibilities and so began a huge summer-long collaborative effort from the local birders, the landowner, North East Norfolk Bird Club (NENBC) and the RSPB in setting up a Bee-eater Watchpoint to monitor the birds and keep them safe during their first Norfolk breeding attempt. The rest is history – 82 days after the first sighting and 5 fledged chicks later we had our last record of 9 birds over the quarry on 25th August before the Watchpoint was closed and they disappeared to presumably soar over Norfolk before ultimately heading further south.
One of our Watchpoint volunteers commented early on: “In due course much will be written up about the birds, but we shouldn’t overlook the pleasure they are giving to so many.” [Volunteer Alan]. Reflecting back over this summer, one of the stand-out take aways from the experience really is how these birds touched the lives of countless people whether they were birders or not – locals, volunteers, wardens, 1st time birders to long-term experts, virtual viewers, the young and not so young, families, photographers, artists, to highlight just a few. As you would expect, the Bee-eaters attracted birders from near and far but the use of social media and the wider internet to spread the news, the on-going interest of TV and radio stations and both local and national printed press, combined with the visual appeal of such brightly coloured and unusual guests, really caught the attention of the broader non-birding public in a way that ‘little brown jobs’ just wouldn’t. All the action taking place in a holiday destination during the school summer hols also helped! To manage this engagement in a safe and user-friendly way whilst protecting the birds has been a big commitment and team effort from many individuals, to whom we are so grateful, and aided by a couple of lucky breaks along the way.
Firstly, not only did the chosen location tick all the boxes for the Bee-eaters, but from a people and logistics perspective it was ideal and this enabled us to interact effectively with the volume of visitors. The site was just off the B1159 coast road with a flat, directly accessible field offering an elevated view of the quarry below with the rural landscape falling away beyond – contrary to popular opinion, Norfolk isn’t entirely flat you see! Plenty of bushes and wires for the birds to sit up on; plenty of space for observers to view from. It was on the Coasthopper bus route with a stop 200m away, just off the Norfolk Coast Cycleway on the Quiet Lanes Explorer route and a stone’s throw from the Norfolk Coastal Path and other public rights of way so perfect for low-carbon birding too. What more could you ask for? Well, luckily, the quarry and the field were both owned by Dan Gotts who enthusiastically engaged from day one in making the site fully accessible and welcoming. In the frantic days of establishing the Watchpoint before we went public, much work went on behind the scenes to prepare the site with simultaneous monitoring of the birds by a hardcore group of NENBC and local patch birders, some of whom were putting in 12+ hour shifts. The quarry was cordoned off and lorry activity in it reduced to the bare minimum. Local residents were informed of what was happening by Dan and dog-walkers and ramblers were approached, educated and diverted. An area was established to form a parking and welcome area with the rest of the large, hedge-lined field offering an ever-changing wildflower and orchid display throughout the season. Signage went up to guide folks in, around and out and RSPB optics arrived for shared visitor use. The RSPB also had a container ‘office-come-kitchen’ and generator delivered and fully-accessible portaloos were arranged and installed thanks to Dan. Gazebos were erected in the welcome and viewing areas and stocked with a small supply of Bee-eater merchandise, including postcards produced from some fantastic early photos by local birder Mike Edgecombe. Site sorted!
Secondly, we had the task of ensuring we had sufficient people-resources to staff the site on a 24/7 basis. The RSPB put in place 3 full-time on-site wardens, Darren, Fabian and Josh. Mark Thomas, their Head of Investigations, had led on previous Bee-eater nesting attempts in the UK so was a wealth of knowledge on the dos and don’ts of such ventures. NENBC was tasked with setting up a supporting rota of volunteers. Fortunately, the club is a founder member of the Cromer Peregrine Project, established by interested organisations and individuals in 2019 when Peregrine Falcons bred for the first time on nearby Cromer Church tower. One of the activities of this group involved setting up and staffing a Peregrine Watchpoint so by the time the Bee-eaters came along, our club already had established systems in place and appropriate volunteer insurance cover (something that you might not think of immediately in the excitement) that enabled us to quickly get a Bee-eater Watchpoint rota up and running. Enter our wonderful volunteers. We invited club members and other local birders to get in touch if they would be interested in helping out to double-staff 2-hour slots from 8am to 6pm daily, welcoming visitors, showing them the birds and the active nesting holes (two in the end), helping with views through scopes and generally talking and enthusing about the Bee-eaters and their behaviours. Additionally we asked for volunteers who would be up for spending a night on watch in the quarry accompanying one of the RSPB wardens on night monitoring duty. We were optimistically hoping we would be able to cover around half the slots but had an astonishing 82 individual volunteer responses for the day shifts that ensured all slots were covered throughout and even some hardy folks willing to take on the stay-awake challenge of the night shift. Staffing sorted!
The 16th June arrived and with a coordinated release of the exciting news, including via SpringWatch, the fun really began! In a fantastic result for public engagement with the natural world, over the course of the following 10 weeks or so we estimate that there were over 20,000 in-person visits to the site by car, bus, bike and on foot. “People have visited in their hundreds, always respectful of the birds, and have been very enthusiastic, some returning several times. It truly has been a unique experience for us and for the many visitors who came.” [Volunteer Denise]. The daily RSPB webcam channel on YouTube that was up and running a few days after site launch attracted over 24,000 subscribers who were able to watch the story of the Bee-eaters unfold live, comment on it and interact with other enthralled observers all without leaving home. On top of that, the Twitter feed for @RSPBBirders had over 280,000 views of the video clip of the first fledging for example and the @NENBC_info Twitter account saw unprecedented increases in traffic. We have recorded over 1,700 volunteer hours on the day shift rota and that doesn’t include any of the hours where volunteers stayed on after their allocated slots or turned up early or appeared on days when they weren’t even scheduled to help out!
The Volunteers
A huge part of the role of our volunteers was to engage with the public. It was fantastic to speak to the visitors and to hear their stories of why they had come, how they had heard about the birds, who they were going to tell and see their faces on seeing the birds. For some this was the first time they had really been enthralled by a bird; for others it was old hat yet still thrilling:
“Many have come with no real knowledge of birds or any idea of what they will find, so to see their reactions and be able to add some background to what they are seeing brightens up my day every time. And hopefully they will leave with an increased interest in birds and nature in general.” [Volunteer Dave]
“Working with volunteers and monitoring birds has been part of my professional life, and now I find myself very newly retired and a volunteer myself. The birds have performed beautifully, and I have lost count of the times I have heard ‘Oh Wow’ when a visitor looked through a ‘scope.” [Volunteer Stella]
“The time spent there has been enjoyable with everyone turning up (almost without exception) being smiley, happy people, be they experts or others pulling into the car park and asking ‘We’ve come to see the Bee-eaters, what do they look like? Do they really eat bees? What should we listen out for’, and more….” [Volunteer Alan]
“A couple visiting from Thetford had seen bee-eaters while living in The Gambia but that didn’t diminish their excitement when viewing the Trimingham colony through a scope set up by the RSPB.” [Volunteer Cath]
We were really pleased to be able to have appealed to all age groups both with visitors and those helping out at the site. Volunteers were more than happy doing anything that would improve the visitor experience, including for the younger crowd: “We are all constantly advising and patiently answering questions, dog minding, lending binoculars, lending sun cream, litter picking, emptying bins, adjusting stools and scopes for little people … It is a happy place to spend a few hours and there are many thank-yous from grateful visitors.” [Volunteer Lin].
Landowner Dan’s 4-year-old media-savvy son Harry stole the show whenever the media showed up, sporting his Bee-eater badge and ensuring that everyone knew they were watching European Bee-eaters, not just Bee-eaters. Oscar, the 9-year-old grandson of one of our members, was adamant after a family visit that he wanted to be interviewed for our NENBC Annual Bird Report informing us “I was fascinated by how they caught such large insects. I saw a particular individual with a dragonfly in its very long bill, it was a very large emperor dragonfly. It dropped it a few times and it was toying with it but then eventually did manage to swallow it.”.
We had several of the club’s younger members volunteering in between their education and work commitments including Daniel: “I'm really super keen to be a volunteer at the bee eater reserve! This is so exciting!!”. We also had site visits from many of the up-and-coming young ornithologists and conservationists around the country who take part in the RSPB and BTO youth panels and brighten up social media with their views and activities. The accessibility and flatness of the site also meant it was suitable for enthusiasts with mobility issues and was fully wheelchair friendly, including at the viewing area, which was great for visitors and some of our volunteers alike. Additionally, if the walk from the welcome area to the viewing area proved a little too much, our volunteers were able to guide the odd car down there when needed. We think perhaps our oldest visitor was a nonagenarian grandfather who had seen the birds on the telly and had insisted on being brought by his family.
Not everyone needed extra assistance though: “A sprightly lady in her seventies arrived on her bicycle, having cycled from Norwich in just over, as she proudly told me, two hours! No electric bike, just pure pedal-power. When she left, thoroughly pleased with what she had seen, I asked her if she was now off home. ‘No’, she replied, ‘I am off to the beach for a swim, then I will cycle back to Norwich; I am aiming for under two hours this time’. Marvellous.”
The night shift
Once the crowds had gone for the day, there was the daunting task of the overnight 9pm-6am watch. The purpose was to ensure the ongoing safety of the birds, minimise disturbances and deter predators. RSPB were leading on this and understandably we had fewer volunteers than for the daytime activities, but a few hardy souls took the 9-hour challenge on. In a team of two, it involved sitting in a vehicle at the bottom of the quarry and looking out for any movement in the vicinity of the nest holes. Armed with a strong torch and some impressive thermal imaging kit, at the first sign of movement the torch would be shone and in most instances this was sufficient to scare off any potential threats without any direct engagement. Over the course of the night and day watches, the main scares came from stoats, weasels, foxes, inquisitive Kestrels and the occasional off-piste photographer, the latter being dissuaded with additional help from the wildlife officer of the local constabulary where necessary.
Volunteer Richard speaking about night time protection of the birds: “My night shift to help the wardens guard the Bee-eaters took me back to a previous life, a few moons ago now. Then, when protecting vulnerable nesting Golden Eagles, Red Kites and Peregrines (yes, they were both once very rare), other raptors and also the first breeding Black-winged Stilts, we crouched in tents or in the open, didn’t need insurance cover and, where necessary, got the local police to install intruder detection devices – the sort used for catching burglars. Now, of course, the RSPB has all that in hand. My shift was with Josh, a young RSPB warden, and we chatted through the night in the front seats of his van, overlooking the nest site which was only visible through fantastic night vision binoculars, not available in my nest-watching days. Nor was the other equipment at his disposal. But let me tell you a story. I reported in on site at 7pm. There were still quite a few people, but no sign of the birds. At about 8 o’clock a lady arrived, youngish and with a mass of startling green and purple hair. She had come from Norwich, only had a monocular and knew little about birds, but was really keen to see the birds. The bee-eaters weren’t there and we stood around waiting in expectation, when suddenly we heard them calling and in came three to sit on the wires. Suddenly she cried, ‘My gosh, they’re amazing, I’ve just seen my next hair colour fly in’……..”
Many of our volunteers spoke about the comradery of being on site, the chance to not only meet and speak to visitors but spend time with other club birders who they’d only see fleetingly during break-times at club events, a fair proportion of which have been online over the past couple of years. As is usual with any NENBC activity, there was a plentiful supply of home-made cakes that appeared regularly much to the delight of volunteers and they were also rewarded by the generous donation of a book each from local wildlife book supplier Wildsounds. Plenty of other birdlife was recorded at the site, with many folks commenting on the interaction of the Bee-eaters with our more regular wildlife, plus moth, butterfly, dragonfly, damselfly and wildflower ID-ing was an idle pastime during Bee-eater downtime. A number of creative individuals were spotted sketching up at the site, several of whom have shared their artwork on social media, and there was even the opportunity to join an on-site art class for a new perspective with some excellent advice:
“When you attempt to draw the birds in the field, while actually looking at them, you have to see so much more. And the more you do it, the more you notice, the more you begin to understand how bee-eaters work and what they really look like under different light and weather conditions and at different times of day. These differences may be every bit as real as any of the features noted in field guides, and the tool to start really seeing them is a simple pencil and paper, and absolutely not a camera.” [Volunteer Mark]
The locals
How have the local residents reacted? Predominantly with as much enthusiasm as the rest of us! Landowner Dan has been great at liaising with the community and several of the patch birders are village-based which has been key. There has obviously been a lot more traffic to the village than normal and we have worked hard to ensure that visitors park in the allocated site area rather than clogging up the limited local parking. Villagers have continued to exercise their dogs on site and stop to chat with observers. The RSPB wardens stayed in local paid accommodation and no doubt plenty of the folk who came from further afield stopped overnight in Norfolk and partook of the victuals in nearby establishments too. An enterprising ice cream seller was a regular up at the site and visitors weren’t backward in asking what else was on offer locally: “At times I have been something of a Tourist Info Centre being asked where the nearest café and shops are.” [Volunteer John] and “As the human visitors leave, they ask for recommendations as to where they can get food, a good pub or a friendly village store. And of course, many have already spotted the freshly picked local strawberries and raspberries in the lay-by a quarter of a mile along from our field. They are yummy. I get some every time I go there!” [Volunteer Liz]. That said, I expect those living nearby are very pleased to have their quiet village back!
Feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. The negatives? There were a few gripes about the £5 parking fee but in most instances once it was explained that virtually everyone on site was a volunteer, that site protection costs money, the landowner was losing out on his hay crop and the car park minimises the disturbance to the local residents, folks were happy to contribute. There was also a worry from some quarters about the volumes of insects that the Bee-eaters would actually consume. This isn’t quantifiable but the adjoining meadow was certainly alive with insect life throughout the season.
All in all, a fantastic experience for everyone involved and as our club chairman Trevor Williams says: “Our thanks go to Dan the landowner, RSPB staff, local birders, the volunteers and visitors for helping make this a brilliant collaborative piece of Norfolk birding history!”.
9 September 2022
Share this story
