Howdy folks! Welcome back to the Frampton Marsh recent sightings blog. With me, Chris the Visitor Guy. Yes, I know it has been a while. As often happens I had a lot of leave to take before the end of the financial year, but I am back now.
So it appears is winter. As I write this the wind is howling outside, there is a smattering of snow and all the birds are shivering. Still, there are some signs of spring at least. But we'll get onto those in a bit. Let us start with the maps from last weekend.
Bit quiet on the Saturday, maybe everything was out buying last-minute presents for their mothers!
Yes, everything came out on the Sunday. Nice to see the bearded tits got through the Beast from the East, bad weather can often be a problem for them. Avocet numbers coming up nicely too, from 20 on the Saturday to 50 on the Sunday. They had first arrived on the Wednesday before, there is one of those signs of spring I was talking about.
Numbers of avocets doubled again overnight. The whooper swans were a party of 30, leaving the fields of the reserve and heading north with alacrity. off on their migration I would assume. The twite at Freiston were a good sighting.
The twite flock were still showing at Freiston on the Tuesday. Back at Frampton, the kittiwake was the major sighting of the day. Normally off out over the sea, I think I'm right in saying this was the second record actually ON the reserve.
Another major movement of whooper swans on the Wednesday, as 150 flew over going north. Birds from Welney maybe?
Some of our winter visitors are still hanging around, for example the hen harriers. A ringtail (ie either a female or a youngster) was seen on this day.
Spoonbills in the house! Five flew past heaving north, and another spent time on the scrapes before heading over to the wet grassland to roost.
The Mini-Beast hit on Saturday, with high winds and horizontal snowfall for most of the day. Remarkably, the first sand martin of the year decided this was a great time to appear. i reckon it must be regretting its life choices by now!
So how about some photos?
A lovely portrait of a mute swan here by Omar Kyam, from our Flickr page (link down below). It seems to have the right idea, snooze through the manky weather!
This stonechat (yes, it is the return of Stonechat of the Week) is looking a bit weather beaten though. Definitely a bad feather day! Thanks to Pstani for this one.
At the visitor centre the feeders are always good value. Mark Sargeant is one of our team of local volunteers providing a warm welcome to visitors, and he captured this male reed bunting there.
If you are coming to visit us, you can keep up to date with the sightings by following our Twitter account. No need to have an account yourself, we make it so everyone can see it. If you do tweet yourself, please remember to use #RSPBframpton so we can see what you are posting, and also ideally mention @RSPBNorfolkLinc. If you have any good photos (or video, or even artwork) we'd love to see that too. Tweet it, or share it on our Facebook page or our Flickr account. It may also be useful for you to know the weather and tide times for the site, which may well have an impact on what is showing.
Finally, if you would like to give us an extra bit of support you can text to donate money to the reserve. Please text FRAM26 followed by £2, £5 or £10 (eg FRAM26£5) to 70070.
So, that is pretty much everything. I hope you all have a great week, stay safe, and I will catch you all next time!
Reedbed, freshwater scrapes, saltmarsh and wet meadow. Frampton Marsh has it all! Come and pay us a visit soon.