Trip to East Norfolk and Suffolk with Joe
Intro
Something I didn’t mention in my last blog entry is that during my time in the Pyrenees, I discovered that my friends back home in England were on a birding trip to Norfolk. Now this wouldn’t usually have bothered me, but I discovered this at almost the exact second I realised I wasn’t going to see a Black Woodpecker, despite climbing a mountain to do so (see the previous post for more on this). But that’s not the only reason I felt a little sad about their being in Norfolk.
My paternal grandparents have had a house in West Norfolk since I was very young, and birding excursions while visiting them on family holidays are without a doubt what nurtured an early love for all things feathered. And as an adult, having a place to stay in Norfolk has been a blessing for developing my birding skills. I have taken to staying with my grandparents for birding trips fairly regularly, going up there for New Year’s Day 2025, and briefly before last year’s MigFest as well, usually with my friend Joe who can drive (unlike me). Lets just say that by this point I’m a big Norfolk fan.
To return to that moment in the Pyrenees, I was happy to see my friends out birding, but the pastime is a powerful generator of FOMO, and they were seeing birds which I had never seen before, most notably the long-staying Black-Winged Kite.
In mid-January I met up with the aforementioned Joe, who had been on the Norfolk trip, and I tactfully suggested that the two of us might go on a similar trip so that I could get the chance to see some of the species I had missed out on. I had thought this was a bit of a ridiculous request when I said it, but to my surprise he seemed keen. He hadn’t been out birding much at all in 2026 (the original trip having occurred in late 2025) and agreed to a day trip the next week.
This blog post covers what happened on mine and Joe's trip on the 26th of January. It has taken me some days to write it up, possibly because it was less eventful than the hunter-heavy France trip, but I hope it can provide at least some entertainment or informativeness.
The Plan
As with Joe and my's previous Norfolk adventures, it began with visiting my grandparents. We travelled up to their house in Dersingham on the evening of the 25th, from Joe’s beloved Buckinghamshire. And on arrival we set about planning the next day’s itinerary.
We would travel to NWT Hickling Broad first, where the Black-Winged Kite had seemingly settled in for the winter. It is not a short drive from my grandparents’ to Hickling, so we planned to set off at 7am, aiming to arrive in Hickling an hour and a half later. Having spent some time with the kite we would then head south, towards a pin sent by one of my friends for Tundra Bean Geese. Despite spending so much time in Norfolk, these geese have always eluded me, so I made them a main target for the trip.
Joe had seen the Kite and Tundra Beans on the December trip, so I thought we should add in an additional stop for a little more. I suggested heading further south, into Suffolk, to look for the Zitting Cisticolas at Walberswick, before finishing the day at RSPB Minsmere – a site I had never visited. It was going to be tight timewise, but Joe thought it would be a good idea and provide plenty more common species that this very target specific day would otherwise omit. We went to bed content that the plan was sound and hoping that the birds would play ball with our tight schedule.
Kite
Grey cloud coated the sky as Joe’s red Toyota Aygo pulled into the car park at Hickling Broad. It was nearly 10am. We had been minorly delayed in leaving and traffic had stalled us around Norwich. We were informed that the Kite had been seen earlier that morning out at the raptor viewpoint by one of the NWT staff. It took us another 20 minutes to get out to the viewpoint, where two more birders were also setting up, one of whom seemed to want to do anything other than look through his scope.
This is as good a time as any to take a brief moment to introduce the deadly duo of Joe and Humphrey. Joe and I are an unlikely pair, but we make for a very complimentary birding duo. I can’t drive, fortunately Joe can. Joe doesn’t have a scope, but I do. Neither of us are extremely experienced birders, but together we seem to bird pretty well, and have learnt a lot in the past few years. My Master’s course was based in the next town along from Joe in Buckinghamshire, and we spent many days of my second year on that course birding Little Marlow Gravel Pits and beyond.
Back to Hickling, and having set my scope up at the watchpoint I began to scan. In front of us lay a vast reedbed, punctuated by bare trees and a decrepit windmill. There were several lines of trees at the far end of the reeds, and it was over these that the Kite had been reported hovering earlier that morning. It was a beautifully desolate place to watch through the scope. Marsh Harriers quartered leisurely over the reedbeds. Occasionally a Cormorant or two would fly through the scope view, moving between pools hidden in the reeds.
Scanning... the view from Hickling Raptor Watchpoint
Having been scanning for a fair few minutes, I sat down on one of the benches at the viewpoint and let Joe take the next watch. For the next 30 minutes we continued in much the same way, taking 15-minute watches at a time. It was on Joe’s next watch that the birder who was scanning next to us let out the cry of: “I’m on it, it’s flying along the treeline at the back, right to left”.
I lifted my bins up immediately and scanned along the back line of trees. It can’t have been more than 10 seconds before I saw a white bird flapping slowly in the direction of the old windmill. It was distant through the bins, but the colour scheme and its somewhat unusual shape gave it away as the Kite we were looking for. I found its head somewhat too big for its body, particularly when, having been offered scope views by Joe, the kite flew up into a small tree behind an old birch, and perched facing away from us. As it flew up into the perch you could see the distinctive black wing markings very clearly: a stunning bird.
When perched it became very hard to see, and a fellow visiting birder who arrived after the bird had perched was unable to get on it despite looking through several of our scopes. In between one of his attempts to see it through my scope and me checking that it was still there, the bird vanished. Joe and I had got pretty good views given the distance we were watching from, and had both taken passable phonescopes. We decided to make a move and leave the refinding of the kite in the capable hands of the watching group of birders, which had grown from the 4 of us to now about 8.
Supposed phonescope of the Black-Winged Kite. It is in there somewhere, promise...
The only other bird of note at Hickling was a Robin. When we had arrived, it had flitted in and around Joe’s car, searching for some scraps of sustenance it might be able to pry away from us. And as we packed our stuff away it continued its attempts in vain, perching on the wing-mirror before we pulled out and away, on the hunt for Geese.
Geese
I had suspected that the Tundra Bean Goose would prove to be a tricky proposition. Not only had I not seen one before, but the reported individuals were part of a flock which seemed to be moving on a daily basis. We could only really hope that some would be at one of the pins, or else we would be travelling between sugar beet fields looking for any Pink-footed Goose flocks we could find. By some miraculous stroke of luck, as we were driving along the A149, still a decent distance from the pin we had been sent, a field full of Pinkies came into view on our right. There was a right turn just after the end of the next field and as we drove down it we saw the full extent of goose coverage come into view. It wasn’t anything groundbreaking, but there were definitely 500-odd geese to look through.
As we pulled up to the side of the Geese Joe warned me that we might not be able to get out of the car to scan quite so close. Apparently, hunters will jump out of the car and shoot at geese in a similar manner, so the geese don’t like you getting out too close to them. On our trip at New Year’s in 2025 we had hopped out of the car right next to a huge (1000s strong) flock of Geese, and had seen then fly away immediately, so I had reason to believe this. We drove on a little further, and found a lay-by out of sight, before walking back to our original spot, and beginning to scan.
One of the worst parts of looking for geese in Norfolk is how close you often end up standing to a busy road. The small sideroad we were scanning from was no quiet country lane, but as the cars rushed past us I tried to make some headway with the geese. Scanning from right to left, the first group of note I came across were 4 Greater White-Fronts. With Joe having connected (and corrected my erroneous count of 3) I continued the scan. I was beginning to think that there were no Beans in this flock when I asked Joe what he remembered of them when he saw them.. As he informed me that the key feature was orange legs, an orange-legged goose stepped out from behind a Pinkie in the scope view. There could be no doubt, this was a Tundra Bean.
I don’t know if anyone else has ever been quite that elated to see a goose before, and I celebrated with a little dance by the side of the road. Annoyingly the goose put its head behind its wing just as I finished taking that initial view, but Joe and I waited for a while longer, and both got views of it with its head up. While we waited for it to raise its head, a Barnacle Goose stepped out from the surrounding crowd of Pinkies. I hadn’t seen a Barnacle for a while, and it rounded off a good day for geese. Just before we left the 4 White-Fronts flew off to the South, the same way we were headed in search of Zitting Cisticolas.
Walberswick
Up until this fateful trip, I had never been to Suffolk. It’s one of the counties that I don’t really have to go through to get anywhere, and since my grandparents have always lived in West Norfolk, it’s much too far for a family day trip. But despite my lack of familiarity with the county, I have to say I was impressed by what I saw of it. The habitats that passed by the side of the road were varied and rich, and the houses on the outskirts of Lowestoft reminded me of back home in South London. The heaths that bordered the road leading towards Walberswick itself looked incredibly birdy. It’s safe to say I will be back!
Finding the Cisticolas was going to be tricky. Upon arrival we were only one of two cars in the car park, and there were no birders in sight. It was going to have to be us who re-found them. I had pieced together the exact location of the birds from Birdguides screenshots sent by my other friend (I’m sure he will appear in one of these soon), and scrolling through several blog posts about them when they turned up.
These Cisticolas are significant birds. Not only are they extremely long-staying, but they also bred, the first record of this species doing so in the UK. As we trudged along the seawall, we hoped to make the acquaintance of one of these stars of British Birding History.
There were a few pools to the right of the seawall before we made it to our destination, sparsely covered in waders. One on the first pool looked like a Greenshank to the naked eye, but upon binoculared inspection was a Spotted Redshank. An extremely unexpected year-tick. Checking the records later, the bird had been in the area for a while, but was nonetheless nice to see, particularly in quite strikingly cold winter plumage.
We made our way up to a small area of sand and shingle just behind the seawall, from which we could look out over a large area of reedbed and got to scanning. Light was fading quite quickly however, and after an hour of looking, the air began to bite as well.
There was very little of note bird-wise. Marsh Harriers flew by regularly, a Turnstone flew inland high above our heads, and a small flock of Linnets moved between the reeds and a bush of Sea Buckthorn. No Cisticolas.
As the wind picked up our minds turned to home, Joe suggested heading to Minsmere to finish the day in a hide, but I felt as if we might as well see out the last hour of light at Walberswick and hope for something good. It was lucky we did stay, as within about 15 minutes of that decision, a huge cloud appeared in the distance. It swirled and morphed, coming closer and closer. A massive murmuration of Starlings was angling towards us over the reedbeds.
With Sizewell B in the distance, the Starlings displayed over our heads as we walked up onto the beach. Cisticolas were a distant memory. Sometimes I forget that the common species can be so spectacular that you forget to breathe.
The End of the Day
We headed back home under the cover of darkness, the spectacle of the murmuration fresh in our minds. It is days like these that make this hobby so rewarding.
All picture credits to Joe. BlueSky Tag: @joesn.bsky.social
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