A planned swallow ringing session was cancelled this evening so I headed over to Holme for a couple of hours after work. Missed a new barred warbler (which I would have been able to ring) by 15 mins but did get a nice immature whitethroat. Shut the nets up with Sophie and dropped into Redwell for the phalarope. Cracking little juv bird spinning around the edge of the pool following a couple of blackwits the were stiring up the silt. Two very vocal green sands were also present.

After not going down to Cornwall, I stayed in Norfolk over the bank holiday with a friend to do some sea-watching. Having not been to Cromer before, we decided to give it a go after being told 'it feels birdy'. I should of known as it is normally crap once these words have been uttered. An hour first didn't produce much apart from a strong passage of teal and 1 bonxie. We decided to check some of the scrub around Trimmingham and go back later in the day when the wind picked up. The woods were very quiet so by 11:30 we were back at Cromer in the shelters. Five hours later and telling god knows how many people what we were doing, we had sore feet but a reasonable total. Nothing special but 51 arctic skuas, 6 bonxies and 17 Manx shearwaters was not bad. It didn't help knowing that an adult long-tailed skua and a Corys shearwater had gone past Holme where Dave (it feels birdy) was watching!
Stong winds and heavy rain saw us head to Holme (after the horse had bolted probably) on Monday morning. Dave was heading off to work but said that there were good numbers of skuas passing. The first hours was good but the wind then changed directly to the north and the blowing sand was a nightmare so we moved into the sea-watching hide. There were more birds moving than at Cromer and the highlights were a probable Cory's west but annoyingly too distant to confirm, 2 sooty and 2 Manx shearwaters, 21 arctic and 36 great skuas, juv black tern and oddly, 2 wheaters.