Something new from Murray...
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I’ve been racking my brain as to what to use as a theme for this week’s blog. A ten minute walk from the Visitor Centre here at Frampton Marsh and the answer was perfectly clear...write about everything!
The reserve is becoming very green and is just humming with life and with this glorious weather, it feels like spring is slowly turning to summer. At this time of year, with so much for the nature enthusiast to discover, it becomes difficult to say when one ends and the other begins.
Blossom bedecks the hedgerows and more and more types of wild flowers are adorning the banks. Blackthorn is in flower and this is the bush that bears sloes in the autumn. It is an ancestor of our cultivated plums. The Latin for blackthorn is Prunus spinosa which means “spiny plum” and its common name comes from the fact that the bark is darker than hawthorn. At this time of year, hawthorn is commonly known as “may” for obvious reasons and it is also sometimes known as quickthorn as it grows rapidly. Unlike blackthorn, the small white flowers appear after the leaves open. As many as 150 species of insects feed on its leaves or nectar. Of course, these prickly wayside shrubs also provide perfect places for birds to nest as the thorns deter predators.
Insects are emerging en masse from hibernation or from eggs or pupae to drink the sweet nectar that flowers provide and a future blog post will focus in more depth on the several types of butterflies that can be found here. Also, the ditches on the reserve have been alive with toads (which usually mate later in the spring than frogs).
Toad by Neil Smith
Many of our native birds are in full song and are increasingly being joined by summer visitors that are arriving from Africa. If you’ve yet to see a swallow, we can pretty much guarantee that one! They’ve now been joined by house martins which are slightly smaller and can be distinguished by their lack of tail streamers and their obvious white rumps. Next up will be swifts, cuckoos and turtle doves arriving back from their perilous journeys. We’re hoping you’ll be paying us a visit to help us find them.
Swallow by Neil Smith
To round up, I startled a kid muntjac deer with its mother in the lane yesterday evening; proof indeed of spring’s new life!
Muntjac by Chris Andrews
Murray Brown
Visitor Experience Intern
Reedbed, freshwater scrapes, saltmarsh and wet meadow. Frampton Marsh has it all! Come and pay us a visit soon.