Mundesley nutcracker: twitchers divert the buses – and the bus firm can't fit the bird with a tracker
A rare northern nutcracker turned up in Mundesley, Norfolk, and so did up to 200 birdwatchers. The buses were diverted, the police brought cones, and one teenager looked out of his window to find 50 cameras pointing at him.
One small brown bird. One seaside village. Roughly 200 people with lenses the size of drainpipes.
A northern nutcracker, a crow-family bird that normally lives in places like Siberia, was spotted in a garden in Mundesley, Norfolk, on Friday 23 October. The species had not been recorded in Norfolk since 1968, and had not been widely seen anywhere in the UK since 1991. By Sunday, BBC News reported, around 150 to 200 twitchers had arrived from all over the country.
The same species – not the Mundesley bird. A slender-billed nutcracker in Karpinsk, Russia. Photo: alexey_yabs / CC0 (Wikimedia Commons).
The lanes around Mundesley and Trunch are narrow, and the parking was, let’s say, enthusiastic. Sanders Coaches warned that its CH2, 34 and X55 services might be changed at very short notice because of “a very disruptive slender billed nutcracker (or more so the people double parking everywhere trying to photograph it!)”. It added: “No, we are not ‘running out of excuses’, thank you!”
AI illustration.
The firm also explained why it couldn’t give passengers more precise updates: “Unfortunately fitting one of our bus trackers to the bird would likely constitute a wildlife crime.” Norfolk Police said it had several calls about parking on Trunch Road and Water Lane, and officers put out cones.
AI illustration.
Then the bird landed on the guttering of a house where 17-year-old Max, from Ruislip, was staying. He looked out to find “at least 50” photographers aiming at him. “It looked like they were all taking photos of us,” he told the BBC. His verdict on the star of the show: “It wasn’t a very spectacular-looking bird.”
AI illustration. (Spot Gaz, our gorilla, hiding somewhere in this picture.)
There is a happy ending. Twitcher Wayne Glossop set up a fundraiser for Mundesley Inshore Lifeboat to “give something back”, and it has raised almost £1,500.
Reported by BBC News and BBC News, with details from the Eastern Daily Press.
