Howdy folks! Welcome back to the Frampton Marsh recent sightings. With me, Chris the visitor guy.
Birdfair is on this weekend, so you might be finding yourself down Rutland way. But remember, we're only an hour's drive away (OK, an hour and a quarter if you don't know the sneaky backroad routes), so still plkenty of time to come visit us early in the morning or in the evening for some Framptony goodness.
Right, time to fire up the old time machine, cue the maps, and see what has been about in the past week.
Now there is a full board for you! I didn't even get to add in the curlew sandpiper, which was on South scrape. Garganey was a bit of a surprise, an eclipse male. The hurricane was the one we have mentioned before in this blog, belonging to the BBMF. It was going to the opening of the new WW2 museum located just outside our Freiston Shore reserve. Great news if you are visiting there, the museum (which is open Thursday to Sunday) is quite happy for people to go in and use its loos and cafe.
Again, a great mix of wildlife in there. I think I am right in saying that was the first clouded yellow butterfly of the year. The Lancaster was doing a fly-by for a classic car show in the town of Kirton a couple of miles away, and so gave great views. It might be the last we see of it or the Hurricane for a while though, apparently they have all been grounded due to issues with their engines.
The eyed hawkmoth caterpillar (and others around the reserve) were really getting quite a lot of attention. No wonder, they were just a bit special.
Photo by Chris Andrews
They did not hang around long though. Either eaten or gone off to pupate?
The best time to see the turtle doves where shown seems to be early in the morning. They have a habit of disappearing late morning.
Also, what we didn't know at the time was that there had been a young dotterel out on the saltmarsh. A visitor (hello Nick Hughes!) had been seeing golden plover dotted about, and in the distance saw one that looked a bit odd and so took a photo of it. It wasn't until he got home and blew up the image that he realised it was actually a young dotterel.
Photo by Nick HughesOK, you have to squint a bit, but trust me on this!
Another good wader in on Wednesday in the shape of a pectoral sandpiper. Presumably a different bird from that seen a couple of weeks ago. Whinchat was nice too.
All good regular stuff from Thursday.
And there we have Friday, with two whinchats, spoonbills still posing in front of the visitor centre, curlew and wood sandpipers.... All rather nice!
So, I've been promising for a while some nice photos. Let's see what we've got. No, wait, tell you what. Let's have a couple of videos first...
Ian Ellis caught this wonderful video of playful stoats
Steve Black found these hares proving it doesn't have to be March for them to go mad!
OK, now the photos. Strap yourself in, there are a few...
Ever feel like the odd one out? Whooper swan amongst dunlins, by Philip Milne
Wood sandpiper, by Steve Daniels
It isn't just rarer birds that delight either. This starling was taken by Harry Cox
Reflections of a lapwing, by Jeremy Eyeons
Greenshank by Ian Bollen
Common sandpiper by Ian Bollen
Kestrel, by Mark Holmes
Spoonbills in British summertime weather! By Debsie Pickering
Spotted flycatcher by Paul Sullivan
Ichneumon fly Hepiopelmus variegatorius. By Paul Sullivan
Young cuckoo by Jeff Everett
Now, regular readers of the blog will know that Neil Smith is a local photographer who gets a lot of good images. Imagine my excitement when I found I had four *large* emails from him. The following are just a selection, he really is very very good... Thank you Neil!
Wheatear
Roosting godwits
Peregrine
Yellow wagtail
Mmmm, fish supper!
Neil doesn't just do birds though. Oh no! Sometimes the zoom gets swapped for a macro lens
Small heath
Gatekeeper on knapweed
Short-winged conehead
Roesel's bush-cricket
Young grasshopper. You can clearly see here the difference between bush-crickets (like the conehead and the Roesel's) and grasshoppers. It is in the length of the antennae.
And Neil doesn't just do wildlife, he does landscape shots too!
We are sailing, we are sailing...
And finally (lest you all get fed up)
Looking to the week ahead, it is high tide alert time again. There are some pretty nice ones coming up, and once again at a sensible hour. Anything over 7.5 metres can have quite an effect as lots of the mud and saltmarsh gets covered, driving the birds onto Frampton Marsh and Freiston Shore. An 8 metre plus tide can cover all the saltmarsh at Frampton, and is quite a sight! So, key times and heights are:
So Wednesday or Thursday morning look like a fantastic time to visit. Something to note, there will be sampling work being carried out on the scrapes at some point during the week, so do not be surprised if you see staff out there.
If you are going to visit us, you can keep up to day 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.
I hope you all have a great week, take care, have fun, and I will catch you next time.
Reedbed, freshwater scrapes, saltmarsh and wet meadow. Frampton Marsh has it all! Come and pay us a visit soon.