News of a Glaucous Gull having been seen at Sheringham had me checking the beach at West Runton in case it had made it along to there but there was no sign and a further update on the bird came through to say it was still at Sheringham. I therefore made my way along there and quickly located it sitting on one of the groynes along the seafront. I watched it for a minute or so before it took flight and steadily flew along the beach to the east, and once it was obvious that it wasn't just having a fly round but purposely heading off I quickly made my way back to West Runton to again see if it would stop and feed on the beach there as there had been a good number of Gulls there over the last few days.
Upon arrival at West Runton I quickly scanned the beach to the west but drew a blank, so quickly looked to the east and was delighted to pick it up slowly flying along the tideline. It briefly landed on the beach but was soon flushed by a dog walker and again carried on east before landing again on the beach. Again it was flushed by walkers but just went out onto the sea before returning to the beach almost off East Runton now.
I phoned out the news that I had relocated it and a number of people arrived shortly later and we continued to watch it albeit at great distance. Once again it was flushed by a walker but this time it headed back west and flew right back along the beach in front of the small crowd in the car park, and then returned to Sheringham.
As it was the warmest day of the year so far, I decided to go up to Felbrigg Park in the evening for the slight chance of seeing a Tawny Owl, with no luck, but good numbers of Woodcock were seen flying out of the woods to feed in the meadows at dusk, and a bat sp. (presumably a pipistrelle) was seen hawking around the field edge and had obviously come out of hibernation due to the warmth of the day.
The previous few days had seen me carefully scrutinizing the fairly large low-tide gatherings of Gulls at West Runton in the hope of picking out a Lesser Black-Backed Gull which is fairly scarce in the county during winter (I only manage to see one on the patch when they start to return in March/April time), so I was very pleased to find one on the sea off West Runton on the 19th. The wintering adult Med Gull was in the car park as usual.
A visit to Felbrigg Park on the 20th revealed that the (feral) Goose flock had returned after having been absent during all the freezing weather, with 17 Greylags and 4 Canadas being present.
On the 21st I decided to check the Cromer ridge in the hope of finding a wintering Firecrest, and whilst in the woods I heard a distant sound of what I initially thought was a small dog yelping but after a short while I heard the noise again and quickly realised that it was a flock of Geese approaching and by the calls strongly suspected that they were Whitefronts. Fortunately they passed right overhead allowing me to pick out the barring on their bellies as they went over the tree-tops, and I estimated there was about 30 birds in the flock, only my second ever record of Whitefronts for the patch.
A Chinese Water Deer at Sidestrand was the first one I had recorded on the patch.
