Howdy folks, and welcome back to the Frampton Marsh (and Freiston Shore) sightings blog. With me, Chris the Visitor Guy!
As tradition dictates, we will be starting off with a week's worth of maps.
Not a bad day, anyone remember the glossy ibis of 4 summers ago? That one hung around for 6 months...
Lots of baby birds on the road. i had to gently suggest to a family of swans that they might like to not stand in the middle of the access road, and instead move back onto the ditches before there was a nasty accident.
Unfortunately this ibis was a three day wonder, and disappeared at 4 pm. A black-winged stilt (the same one wandering around the area) was a good compensation though. As was nice views of the B17, for those that like planes.
The stilt moved to Freiston Shore overnight, and Tuesday was a bit blowy so birds were hard to come by. The reappearance of a curlew sandpiper was good.
Decent sized groups of sanderlings were sheltering on the wet grassland north of the road during high tides.
For some reason, it was very quiet on Thursday!
We've been overdue a black tern for a while, so nice that one finally made an appearance. Little terns are somewhat uncommon actually over the reserve, though can be seen at the river mouth. And the stilt came back to Frampton after getting bored of Freiston. The grassland area North of the road continued to be good for waders over the high tides.
So, there are the maps. What about the nice pictures?
Well, as previously mentioned there are any number of young birds out there. Becky Hodgins got great close-ups of an avocet chick and a cygnet.
Mark Sargeant got this close-up of a coot chick (or cootling, as I like to call them) through the visitor centre windows. A family of coots has been coming very close to the windows, and delighting visitors.
You can see where the expression "as bald as a coot" comes from!
Jeremy Eyeons was another person who got good avocet chick photos.
Though may I remind readers to not to try to get too close to the birds. You will stress them out, especially the parents. Position yourselves so the birds come to you, rather than you chasing them about.
What would be a sightings blog without a Neil Smith photo? This week he provides this action shot of a little egret catching its dinner. Gotcha!
At the other end of the action scale, Rod Smith has a couple of wonderful plantlife photos. Common vetch, and a dandelion clock.
Back to the flying things, two for the price of one (sort of) as 'Omar Khyam' on our Flickr site put up this reed bunting with mayfly prey.
And to round things off, here is Karl Royce's photo of the B17 Flying Fortress bomber, returning back to the Imperial War Museum at Duxford.
And there you have it!
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.