Birdwatching holidays in Norfolk

Bird Watching and Nature Tours at Cranmer Country Cottages

Award winning Cranmer Country cottages provides an ideal peaceful location for bird-watching holidays. Our luxury cottages are part of our home at Home Farm Cranmer and are set in a rural location close to the north Norfolk coast at Holkham and Wells-next-the-sea. We offer our guests luxury accommodation with an indoor swimming pool open all year round and grounds to explore. Our smallest cottageCoot sleeps 2 and is an ideal birdwatchers bolthole. Alternatively the larger cottages can offer space to accommodate groups in communicating cottages of up to 12. Home Farm provides an opportunity to observe farm birds from the doorstep and the wonderful dunes of Holkham are within cycling distance. Close by the local Hawk & Owl Trust reserve at Sculthorpe Moor and Pensthorpe recent home of Springwatch. Further along the coast birders can observe the wading birds at RSPB Snettisham, Pink footed geese and Avocets at RSPB Titchwell Marsh and the wintering and migrating wildfowl and waders at Norfolk Wildlife Trust reserve Cley Marshes.

Norfolk is renowned as the birdwatching capital of Britain. There’s plenty to see whatever the time of year – from Barn Owls to Kingfishers, Avocets to Bearded Tits. Norfolk is a birdwatchers’ paradise and a wonderful place for children to begin to learn about their feathered friends. With child-friendly visitor centres and nature reserves, you’ll find all the help and information you need to get started.

 

Close to Cranmer Country Cottages there are several parks and gardens which have been created to be especially appealing to birds of all kinds. Pensthorpe, near Fakenham is 15 minutes from Home Farm and is a centre for wildfowl set in 500 acres of beautiful countryside. There are miles of peaceful nature trails to explore through ancient fen meadows, woodland and a superb series of lakes. Pensthorpe is home to Europe's finest collection of waterfowl including endangered exotic waterfowl from around the world, and was also the home of BBC Springwatch for 2008 and 2009. Within 5 minutes of Cranmer Country Cottages is Sculthorpe Moor Community Nature Reserve - an excellent chance to get close to birds throughout a patchwork of habitats including wet woodland, hazel coppice, reed and sedge beds, open water and wet meadow.

 

The North Norfolk coast is the home of the Norfolk Wildlife Trust’s Holme dunes which contains a huge variety of species, such as avocets, ringed Plovers Redshanks, curlews and Lapwings. There is also Cley and Salthouse Marshes for Black-tailed Godwits, Ruffs, Snow Buntings and several thousand Brent Geese. The wetland nature reserve at Titchwell Marsh attracts all kinds of birds including the Marsh Harrier. The wash is one of the country’s most important winter feeding areas for waders and wildfowl. The best place to see these thousands of birds coming into roost is Snettisham nature reserve.

As part of our commitment to green tourism farmland at Home farm is being managed in a sustainable way with the help of Natural England and the Higher Level Stewardship scheme. The HLS will look to integrate sustainable and environmental farming methods to enhance the wildlife and the landscape of the area, which will be shared by the visitors to Home Farm. This will benefit farmland birds, preserve biodiversity and protect farmland bird species in decline in Britain. Species identified at Home Farm include Stone Curlew, Grey partridge, Lapwing, Tree sparrow and Turtle Dove among others.

 

At Cranmer Country Cottages we have an arrangement with a local ornithologist who can arrange tailor made bird and nature watching trips for our guests.  The nature watching trips can organised for all levels of experience or age.  We are especially fortunate to have Adrian on board as his epic struggle to find rare birds in 2002 (described in his book Arrivals and Rivals: a Birding Oddity) led to the sighting of 381 species in a single year ... more than some birdwatchers have seen in a lifetime! He is also author of the forthcoming book British and Irish Butterflies: the Complete Field, Identification and Site Guide. If you are looking for an elusive bird or butterfly, he will do his best to make sure you go home happy. As taxonomist for the Rothamsted Insect Survey National Light-trap Network for nearly 25 years, he also knows a thing-or-two about moths! On many of the tours a botanist will also be on hand to help with the identification of wild flowers.  http://www.enterprise-io.co.uk/about.htm E-mail: info@enterprise-io.co.uk