Easterlies produced some good seabirds, but migrants remain sparse

A high pressure, giving way to a low pressure system has brought some nice easterly winds to east Norfolk.

Surface Pressure Chart for 23 Sept 2012

I've been out to the coast over the weekend in the hope to find something that equaled Holme's good haul of migrants (Barred + Yellow-browed Warblers and RBF), but the bushes of east Norfolk remain empty of migrants, bar the occasional Blackcap and Chiffchaff. Seawatching, something I don't tend to do a lot of in east Norfolk, has been pretty good though. There's been a good southerly passage of Gannets all weekend as well as lots of Red-throated Divers moving south. An hours seawatching from Waxham on Saturday evening provided a nice Grey Phalarope, feeding for a while offshore before moving off north. After that I headed down to Nelson Head, making use of the lovely light to snap a few Grey Seals and Sanderling (below).
Finding very little (nothing!) in the Nelson Head area this morning (Sunday) I headed back to Waxham to do a couple hours of seawatching. Although the actual number of birds wasn't great, the variety was. Within 40 minutes of obs., I'd seen 4 species of skua. A couple of Bonxies moved south followed by a lovely sub-adult (second-summer I think) pale phase Pom Skua, which spent a few minutes loafing around close inshore before moving off north. It was an interesting looking bird, with a pretty good dark cap, quite a bit of barring down the flanks and on the chest (forming a strong breast band) and a pale ginger nape. About 10 minutes later a dark juvenile Long-tailed Skua flew south. It was so close inshore that almost missed it, just catching it fly through the bottom of my scope field of view. Long-tailed Skua is one of those birds that when you see a skua sp and wonder "is it, isn't it", then it's almost certainly an Arctic Skua. When you see a Long-tail, there's not really much confusion. And to top everything off, a couple of Arctic Skuas flew north, pursuing some Sandwich Terns.

Grey Seals, Nelson Head, Norfolk

Grey Seals, Nelson Head, Norfolk

Grey Seals, Nelson Head, Norfolk

Sanderling, Nelson Head, Norfolk

Sanderling, Nelson Head, Norfolk