But as long as you love me so...

Who knows whether the Cley Marsh Sandpiper was a Greenshank or not, I don't even need it for the Norfolk list I don't keep. For me the star of the show yesterday morning was a ridiculously tame Snow Bunting on the shingle north of the reserve. The first of the winter, it pottered unconcernedly around people, it's only care in the world where the next seed was coming from. Despite it walking up to you - literally - 'real' birders felt the need to scope it, which was totally absurd really. I mean sure, you'd get a nice view and all that, but the real relationship with the bird was one where you lay down on the shingle and observed it from about three feet away. Possibly two feet actually, it just got silly at points. This was a bird that you knew had never ever seen people before. Photography took a back seat for large parts of this special encounter, mainly as it was a pleasure to simply watch it so close and observe it feeding, but also because for a lot of the time I would have needed either a wide angle lens or a macro. I honestly could have reached out and touched it it was that close. So delightful - let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.