When we will hear Norfolk’s Heaven’s hound again?

Pink Feet geese in the air at sunset over North Norfolk. Photo: Martin Hayward Smith.

Tens of thousands of pink-footed geese migrate to the west and north of Norfolk each October.

The air fills with their calls at dawn and dusk, as they fly to and from their inland feeding grounds in great V-shaped formations.

But while the birds have taken wing from their summer Arctic breeding grounds, few as yet have arrived in Norfolk. Instead record numbers of pink foots have been recorded in Scotland.

Paul Eele, warden for the RSPB's Snettisham and Titchwell reserves, near Hunstanton, said: 'For early November, the numbers are quite low. The reasons for that are difficult to tell but I suspect it's to do with the warm weather.

Hundreds of pink footed geese taking off in Brancaster. Picture: Ian Burt (Image: Archant © 2013)

'There's plenty of food in the north and Scotland and they haven't neeeded to come south yet. There are birds around but no big numbers yet.'

Mr Eele said the birds' absence could impact on numbers of human visitors if they stayed away. Snettisham offers some of the most spectacular views of the birds in the whole of the UK.

The Scottish Wildlife Trust has counted almost 80,000 on its Montrose Basin Reserve, on the east coast between Dundee and Aberdeen.

Montrose Basin reserve manager Rab Potter said: 'The number of pink-footed geese at Montrose Basin this year has taken all of us by surprise. Currently, pink-footed geese out number people in Montrose by almost seven to one.'

Pink-footed geese

• Pink-footed geese (anser branchyranchus) fly south each year from their breeding grounds in Iceland and Greenland.

• Large numbers of the birds usually begin arriving in October.

• Pink-foots roost on The Wash and fly inland at dawn to feed in large V-shaped formations called skeins.

• The birds feed on beet tops left on the fields after the winter crop is harvested.

• As well as being a sign that winter is on the way in the west of the county, they attract tourists who come to see the birds' spectacular dawn flights.

Is Scroby Dick back?

Whale watchers are expected to turn out in force at Walcott today after a humpback was repeatedly spotted off the north Norfolk coast.

The sightings, first noted on Tuesday, have been confirmed by Carl Chapman, Norfolk Cetacean Recorder, who is confident that the sea giant is the same humpback which visited Norfolk a year ago and became affectionately known as Scroby Dick.

'It breached today – coming out of the water in its totality and that's what I wanted to see,' said Mr Chapman.

'It's fantastic. It's about two to three kilometres offshore so you will need binoculars or a spotter 'scope to see it. It's following the herring shoals. If they came closer inshore it would follow,' he added.

The whale had flipped its tail out of the water and displayed unique black and white patterning on its 'fluke' – the lobes which make up its tail.

'What I saw gave me enough confidence to say it is the same animal which has returned,' said Mr Chapman.

The first sighting this year of the whale off Norfolk came at Winterton on Tuesday. It was spotted off Mundesley on Thursday, where Mr Chapman later confirmed the sighting, and at Walcott yesterday.

Mr Chapman said the whale could stay for about a fortnight, as it did in October last year, if the herring stocks held out.

Have you seen the whale, and have you got photos or video of it? Contact alex.hurrell@archant.co.uk

Other visitors

• Norfolk enjoys a wealth of migrating birds from colder climes, which spend the winter on the county's wetlands and estuaries.

• Some of the best known are the thousands of Bewick's and hooper swans, which fly from Siberia to the Ouse Washes around Welney, on the Norfolk- Cambridgeshire border.

• Brent geese, bean geese and Greenland white-fronted geese also flock to parts of our coastline and areas like the Yare Valley.