An early morning walk along Cromer golf course revealed there had been a mini arival of migrants with a number of Chiffchaffs singing from the woods and cliff-face vegetation and a Wheatear flushed from the clifftop by the lighthouse.
Further along I discovered a Black Redstart flycatching from the bracken and gorse just above the turf slope, and then quickly noted a second and then amazingly a third one, plus a Wheatear and a male Stonechat all on the same slope, which due to it catching the morning sun obviously had a good supply of insects on tap.
Whilst watching them I managed, by total luck, to get the picture below of one of the Black Redstarts in the pursuit of a fly, whilst the Wheatear looked on.
A trip down to West Runton produced 4+ Wheatears along the cliffs and in the car park, including the first female, and then my attention was grabbed by a group of large gulls starting to actively congregate on the sea and a look through my bins revealed that one of the Great Black-backs in the group was in the process of eating something. I got my scope on it out of curiosity, and it appeared that it was most likely a small (probably Little) Grebe which quickly disappeared head first down the gulls throat! Offshore a Gannet and 4 Red-throated Divers were noted passing by.
Having just finished a trip to the local supermarket, I received a phone call to say that an Alpine Swift had just been seen over Overstrand village but it had been lost to view and it wasn't clear which way it had headed. I quickly raced over there, dumping my shopping on the way, and then quickly scanned over the village and along the cliffs but drew a blank.
I then made the decision to have a go of chasing after it, and plumped for the option of it heading west so went back to Cromer and took position on a high point and scanned over the town, but again no sign. I then scanned to the west and quickly picked up the distant but unmistakable silhouette of the ALPINE SWIFT hawking over some pine trees just beyond East Runton, so heading further along the coast I picked it up again looking back west from between East and West Runton and phoned the news out so other observers could enjoy this suberb bird.
It then flew quite strongly west, fortunately passing right overhead and disappeared over West Runton. I then relocated it again over the village and managed to get the first couple of birders on to it who had just arrived, and it then settled down for a while giving more observers the chance to connect with it, and I managed to get the record shot below of it as it passed overhead.
After a while it headed back east and it was relocated over Cromer, where after feeding over the town centre for a while we watched as it made a number of apparent attempts to fly up onto the church tower. It then, after another attempt, disappeared from view and we presumed it had gone into the tower to roost as there was no further sign of it until dark.
This bird is part of a national influx of these stunning birds that have overshot southern Europe, and which we are experiencing in the UK at present, with at least a dozen or more being reported over the last couple of days, with at least one or two others in Norfolk today.
