Howdy folks! Welcome back to the Frampton Marsh recent sightings blog. With me, Chris the visitor guy...
Yes, remarkably we are on time this week. Miracles never cease! Right, with no further ado, let's crack on and look at some maps.
Well, that's a pretty good variety of stuff. Which mostly sets the scene for the rest of the week.
Has to be said the turtle doves aren't always being the easiest birds to find. The traditional tree where they used to berch has partly collapsed, which makes things somewhat trickier.
There are in fact seven curlew sandpipers on site, some in reasonably nice colours. Which is great to see.
Also in good colours are some of the ruff. Check out this chappy, photographed by Jeremy Eyeons
Though ruffs can come in all shapes and colours. This could well be 'Lucien', the presumed leucistic male. Leucistic means it is missing some of its pigment, so either the bird appears 'washed out' or has white patches. Blackbirds are well known for this. In the case of Lucien, the white colour on the head and neck does not disappear in the winter, when other ruff revert back to brown. Thanks to Stuart Carlton for the picture.
Mind you, Lucien isn't the only black and white bird about. Neil Smith got a lovely action shot of this avocet...
A bit of a flashback to a couple of weeks ago, and Kevin Mayhew's picture of the black-winged stilt
Why do we get all these waders? Well, one of the reasons is the amount of invertebrates. Particularly chironomids, the non-biting midges. Their larvae form a bit part of the diet of many birds. Here are two side by side. Male on the left, female on the right. Spot the difference time! Thanks to Rod Smith for these.
One bird that would be happy to gobble up a midge or two would be reed warblers. Mark Sargeant captured this great close-up
While reed warblers are brown, other small birds have fantastic colours. Kevin Mayhew got a slice of gold with this yellowhammer
Other birds do fantastic things. Like this hovering kestrel, as captured by Alan Brewster. it is great to see them hovering in the air, fixed in one spot as they try to find mice or voles to catch.
Small mammals might be fair game to a kestrel, but deer are definitely off the menu! Oliver Woodman supplies this atmospheric action shot of a a roe deer.
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.