Pod of Pilot Whale passing Cley East Bank, 10th November 2014 

Monday is my ‘duty day’ at Cley NWT. I’d checked out the birds on Pat’s Pool and taken a slow walk down East Bank. I was just returning from looking at the female Long-tailed Duck at the back of Arnold’s when I met Steve & Sue. Whilst Steve and I were talking about the Desert Wheatear ‘fest’ at the weekend, Sue was looking out to sea when see noticed a group of large cetaceans moving east. Steve quickly identified them as Pilot Whale and we counted at least fifteen travelling in a pod about two thirds the way out towards the wind farm. They spent the afternoon gradually making their way past Salthouse, and Weybourne arriving at Sheringham by about 4.40 – their numbers increasing to 28 at the last count.

Apparently this is the first record of live Pilot Whale off Norfolk – all seven previous records have been of dead beached individuals, the last of which was in 1992.  So forgive the rather poor quality digipics but they do capture a small piece of Norfolk cetacean history!

For more and better photos click here to view Steve’s website  and for more background see Carl’s, Letter from Norfolk.