Mike Toms on the shore lark, a hard-to-spot visitor which might have flown all the way from Russia.

If I think about it too hard, the challenge of finding these small birds in this large expanse of suitable habitat becomes too much. Small, mostly brown and likely to be feeding head down, shore larks are difficult to pick out; fortunately, however, they tend to be quite mobile here at Holkham and once in flight they are far easier to spot. Today we are fortunate; a birdwatching couple guess correctly that we are looking for the larks and send us off in the right direction. Long before we reach the broken post indicated as a marker, we spot the birds. Flying left to right they drop down onto open ground just ahead of a couple and their children. Strung out in a line, all holding hands, the family party must have flushed the shore larks from some longer cover – fortunate for us but less so for small birds wanting to feed.

Quickly we get the telescope on them and reveal the stunning yellow and black head markings that make these such delightful little birds. There are eight of them in this flock, moving together across the ground with a series of short scuttling runs. There is some interaction between the different individuals and I wonder how easy they are in each other's presence. The numbers wintering in Norfolk vary from year to year but are generally rather low, though a coordinated county-wide survey conducted on December 5 1998 revealed a total of just under 600 birds.

The origins of these winter visitors are unknown but it is thought that they are likely to be birds from the breeding populations located in Scandinavia or western Russia. The shore lark has an interesting global distribution; in addition to the breeding populations in northern Scandinavia and Russia, the species is found across northern North America and, intriguingly in the Moroccan Atlas mountains, the Balkans and Turkey. Recently a bird of a North American race – known as 'Horned Lark' was found wintering at Staines Reservoir to the west of London, something that caused quite a stir in birdwatching circles. For me, however, this is a species that I associate with the North Norfolk coast, a species well worth the effort of seeking out.