Another lovely calm day with plenty of warm sunshine. A walk around Norwick had produced a Sparrowhawk, a Woodcock, plenty of small flocks of Great Black-backed and Herring Gulls arriving for the first time this Autumn, 6 Blackcaps, a Siberian Chiffchaff, one of the Yellow-browed Warblers, c.10 Brambling and c.15 Chaffinch but just as I was passing the cemetery nearing home I heard Redpolls calling and turned around to see a Hornemann's Arctic Redpoll accompanied by a much smaller Redpoll sp. flying past me. Whilst watching them fly west, I heard a deep 'chet chet chet' from above me, looked up and there was a superb clean-flanked Hornemann's sat on wires virtually directly above me. On obtaining only a couple of images and I heard another series of call from behind me, turned around, and there was another 2 clean-flanked Hornemann's and a Northwestern Redpoll also sat on the overhead wires! Almost immediately the four birds on the wires flew to some nearby seeding vegetation c.70m away. But before I had reached them frustratingly they flew again, in the direction of the beach. I headed home where I was greeted by Brenda telling me she'd seen a Hornemann's Arctic Redpoll in our garden! I sat down with a coffee and she casually remarked ''it's back'' and sure enough... it then spent a while in our garden before flying off high north. I revisited Norwick but couldn't relocate any Redpolls. At Skaw I saw a Siberian Chiffchaff but on returning home managed my second garden tick of the morning - a Great Tit! We then headed for Burrafirth to complete the beached bird survey where the highlight was a large flock of lively newly-arrived Gulls that included a Glaucous Gull.
