JGG500

  Spring 2026:   Comings and Goings Some warm south-easterlies in late March/early April brought several scarcities from the continent. A great grey shrike largely kept company with the golfers on the Hunstanton course, occasionally deigning to flirt with the birding hoi polloi on the coastal path. Birders were also out in force on the streets of Sedgeford a few weeks later as a hoopoe wafted from gardens to parks, occasionally stopping for food and photo opportunities. The sight of ageing men in camouflage running down alleyways in answer to the siren call of nature is not an edifying one but such indignity was forgiven by the exotic presence of the onomatopoeically named  upupa epops . The real rarity of this spring was the Ross's gull, a bird of the high Arctic and the first in Norfolk since the Cley adult of 1984. Found at Titchwell, it then circled around fields south of Thornham for a single day. It was a dainty 2CY bird which, after holding off for much of the time...