Regular Common winter visitor and passage migrant.

As winter visitors they are more noticeable during January, February and, March. 300 were seen at Stevenage on 9 March 1975 and, 200 were seen at the Stevenage Football Ground in Broadhall Way on 1 March 1983.

The highest number seen at Fairlands Valley Lakes is 35 in November 2008. Early returning birds have been seen there on 3 July 2000 and 3 July 2016.

The 2012 Winter Atlas confirmed their presence from all 11 of the tetrads covering Stevenage.

A bird with a numbered ring XE46 on its leg seen at Fairlands Valley Lakes on 13 August 2020 had been ringed as a, chick on the island of Langenwerder, off the German Baltic Coast on 29 June 2019. The same bird was again seen at Fairlands Valley Lakes on 21 December 2020, 12 February 2021, 15 and 25 October and 4 November 2022.

On spring migration, they pass through the Stevenage – Hitchin gap on route for the Wash before crossing the North Sea to the Baltic and Scandinavia. 

A road casualty found at Symonds Green in 1981 had been ringed in Norway.