Winter Birding in Norfolk 2025/26 Part 2

 Winter Birding 2025/26

While this has been a meteorologically miserable winter for the most part, it has, as they say, been good for ducks, or certainly waterbirds in general. Numbers of pink-footed geese have been stable, pushing 50,000 along the North Norfolk coast, with good numbers of tundra bean geese amongst them. Ironically, one of the most impressive spectacles - a field at Wighton chock full of over 30,000 pinks with more arriving overhead and others over the brow of the field - didn't seem to contain one. The bird which excited most discussion was the taiga bean goose at North Point pools, thought to be distinct from its tundra cousins just by a neck – or rather despite its lack of one.

In mid-February, a cold snap on the continent, accompanied by some strong easterlies, sent plenty of birds seeking shelter in Norfolk, in a natural complement to the reverse migration of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor who appeared overnight in Wolferton from Windsor. The weather shifted large numbers of lapwing (Holkham counted 24,000), wigeon, teal and white-fronted geese (1200). In the pools and flashes, I watched the latter busily feeding, washing and preening with their distinctive 'laughing' call.

Divers have been very accommodating this winter too. Despite dipping on a black-throated diver in Brancaster Staithe harbour three times, a superb great northern diver, a bird which has always held a fascination for me since reading Arthur Ransome's 'Great Northern' as a child, came to within a few yards in Wells outer harbour. 

To see a bird I always associate with melancholy calls across remote northern lochs happily fishing for crabs on the Norfolk coast like some day-tripping child on Wells quay, was beautifully incongruous. Red-necked grebes at Wells and Burnham Overy were welcome but distant.

In January, Bloomers and I decided to go on safari into Essex in search of a drake smew at Abberton on the first available day of decent weather. Two weeks later, dashing down in a break in the rain and cloud, and overcoming Bloomer’s nosebleed as he crossed the border into the Suffolk Badlands, 2 drakes and 3 females shone on grey water on a grey day.

Also at Abberton, the dash of the Goldeneye

and goosander

rivalled the elegance of the pintail 

back in Norfolk. A ferruginous duck proved difficult on Holkham Lake but amongst the tufted ducks were two scaup; an adult and a juvenile. Goshawks are on the wing now so spring is beginning to edge in shamefacedly through a gap in the cloud.