Wildlife in November

Amazingly, as trees lose their last leaves and many mammals and insects go into hibernation, some species are giving birth. On a few secluded Norfolk beaches a growing population of grey seals is giving birth, courting and mating in November. Look out to sea over the seals and you may be lucky enough to see a passing great skua, pomarine skua or little auk.

Songbird migration continues this month with blackbirds, thrushes and skylarks moving in big numbers. The thrushes may stop to feed in coastal sand dunes on the bright orange berries of sea buckthorn. As they do so, they may be harried by merlins or by peregrines. These falcons often join roosts of other raptors, notably at Stubb Mill at NWT’s Hickling Broad National Nature Reserve. Here more than a hundred marsh harriers, in the company of other birds of prey, may sometimes be seen coming to roost.