Norfolk for Oriole Birding - 28th October 2025

Off east after a leisurely breakfast and we wended our way along the coast all the way to Weybourne Beach where the Glaucous Gull had already had his morning fisherman feed and gone west towards Cley.  Not to worry, it was bright but very windy and we slogged a little way along the shingle to shelter in the lee of the lowest remaining cliff section which gave us a good spot to scan the sea for life. 

It was a very productive our with a flock of Scoter shining in the sun not too far out.  All were female/immature types bar one silky black drake and they were joined for a while by a very white headed Long-tailed Duck that may have been a young male.  It eventually flew back along the coast flashing black underwings while the same feature was visible on the two Little Auks that whirred west.  I know that a few had been around but was very pleased none the less to encounter these two.  A single Guillemot was the only other auk and we also saw ab adult Gannet, two Red-throated Divers and a selection of Gulls that were mainly made up of Great Black-backs and hulking Northern Herring Gulls along with a pristine 1w Caspian Gull.

Great Black-backed Gull

A few Meadow Pipits, Rock Pipits and Skylarks were coming in off and several skeins of Pink-feet came in from the east and I wondered if these were birds re-orientating after Storm Benjimen?

Pink-feet 

Pink-feet 

The chance of a Shorelark took us up the cliff and along to the fields inland of the coastguard cottages but the field was vast and the bird was by itself and despite a good search we could not find it.  Many Curlew probed and were coming up with big fat worms and a flock of 150 or so Linnets were favouring the next field along.  Skylarks were all around us and flocks of Rooks and Wood Pigeons were in the more vegetated fields and a circling Hercules and the puffing Britannia were quality distractions.

In there somewhere

Hercules

Britannia

Retracing our steps gave us two out of place juvenile Mute Swans on the sea and a Sandwich Tern that almost snuck past us below the cliff.  A pair of Stonechats were in the car park where a Cetti’s Warbler sung and a pair of Buzzard in the pine trees included an incredibly pale one.

Mute Swans

The day plan went a bit wafty at this point with lunch at Walsey Hills before doing the East Bank (to look for a Grey Phalarope amongst other things) failed due to lack of parking opportunities so I opted after failing to find anywhere else to park for going back along the coast to Stiffkey Wood but as we got into the village we were being told to try and turn round as a serious accident had occurred and there was no way through. Cue some interesting about turning and then wiggling towards and through Warham before popping back out on the Wells road.

Lunch was at last taken at North Point Pools where we had the place to ourselves and could watch Plovers, Egrets and various Geese from the comfort of the van.  Our subsequent walk down to the sea wall and back gave us better views of at least 18 Cattle Egrets and skeins of conversational Brent Geese while Red Kites and Marsh Harriers quartered the saltings but alas there were no other Harrier species lurking. 

Lapwings

Egyptian Geese

Cattle Egrets

Cattle Egret

Cattle Egret

Cattle Egrets - they are just so entertaining

Golden Plover

Pink-foot

Brent Geese in the sun

Brent Geese

There were still some Ivy flowers and each was rammed full of very hungry Common Wasps.  There were no Bees or Flies whatsoever.  The set aside field had quite a few Skylark in it as well as a good variety of flowers still in bloom with Creeping Thistle, Smooth Sow Thistle, Bristly Ox-Tongue, Scentless Mayweed, Ox-eye Daisy, Weld, Common Cudweed, Field Speedwell, Scarlet Pimpernel, Field Pansy, Creeping Buttercup, Perennial Rocket, White Dead Nettle and Dandelion which is quite impressive for the very end of October.

Common Wasps

Creeping Thistle

Weld

Field Pansy

Back at the van the first Brown Hare was found and the Lapwings in the field had been joined by the previously aerial Golden Plover flock and now contained two Ruff as well.

Grumpy Egrets

Golden Plover

With the light going I moved us on and stopped again at the layby overlooking Burnham Overy Dunes and, as hoped Yellowhammers began to drop into the hedges to roost, the Green Woodpecker yaffled and Chinese Water Deer, Muntjac and Brown Hares started to appear in the fields.

But there were surprises too with two flocks totalling well over 100 Barnacle Geese out on the marshes, a leucistic Pink-foot with his normal coloured brethren and a fantastic Starling murmuration topping several thousand birds that quickly built up and cut some shapes in the sky with swirling and twirling before dropping down into the cattle fields for a last feed where they blackened the ground before eventually the signal for bedtime was given and the whole lot dropped into the big reed bed for the night.

Starlings

I had not given up on Barn Owl and was scanning while counting the obscene number of Water Deer when one passed through my view.  I have never spent so log trying to get everyone onto a distant hunting Barn Owl in the last vestiges of light but I tallied it up in in 12 days of guiding up here since mid-September this is the first that I have seen along this whole coast.  Something is not right about that.

With the temperature dropping and the light almost non-existent we made our way back to Briarfields where a pre-dinner stare at the amazing starry skies gave me meteorites, satellites and, with Antony’s help on the phone, the glowing ball and near vertical tail of Comet Lemmon while the calls of late Pink-feet could be heard as they followed the coast.

Comet Lemmon - Antony Wren