Norfolk Seawatching from the "Cley Beach Hotel"

The weather forecast yesterday evening was predicting North Westerly winds blowing up to 50mph. So with that in mind this morning we headed for Norfolk.

We parked up in the Cley Beach car park and joined the assembled Twenty plus birders already present. With the shelter fully occupied we joined the line of birders outside on the East side. The winds had not yet picked up in strength and were more Westerly than North Westerly. There was very little movement at sea for the first couple of hours but a flock of 25-30 Snow buntings were a very welcome distraction in the bitterly cold conditions. As the wind grew in strength we had our first and only views of a Little auk as it headed East.

With the winds twisting round more towards the North and the rain beginning to fall, we headed for Cley Visitor Centre for much-needed refreshments before heading back to the beach.

Back at Cley, we managed to squeeze into the shelter and found bird passage had improved somewhat from this morning. Several groups of Kittiwakes (Adult & Juveniles) headed West, Bonxies were seen at regular intervals, and a group of four headed East to West and flew past the shelter at close range. 

The bird of the day though had to be the juvenile Glaucous Gull that flew along the beach straight past the shelter just a few metres away.

Sea passage was not as we had hoped for, but along with the single Little Auk, Kittiwakes, and Bonxies, several other species were noted including Little Gull, Caspian Gull, Common Scoter, Guillemot, Great Crested Grebe, Oystercatcher, Dunlin, Red-breasted Merganser, Goldeneye, Red-throated Diver, Brent geese, Wigeon and a single Bar-tailed Godwit.

On route home, we managed to locate the two Cattle Egrets in the flooded field South of the A149.