Howdy folks, and welcome back to another sightings blog by Poppy. Lets see what she has for us this week...
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A very wet Thursday started off the sightings week for us here at RSPB Frampton. So, there wasn’t much to report on the board, due to the lack of people about. The few that did brave the wet reported jack snipe and hen harrier.
Pomarine skua back on the reserve on Friday 15 at location 1. We have had plenty of raptors out and about too. Two merlin seen over the saltmarsh, and the ringtail hen harrier, marsh harrier and peregrine all spotted over the reedbed (location 2).
The morning fog burnt off in the end on Saturday 16 to reveal the sun and a reserve alive with birds. The snow bunting was one of the best of the day, spotted a location 3. Also 5 shag and 2 red-throated divers seen at the river mouth. Also Kingfisher (location 4), stonechat (location 5), green sandpiper (location 6) all about, and plenty of raptors hunting all over the reserve too.
An astonishing 10,505 black-tailed godwits on the wet grassland at #RSPBFreiston also found on the Saturday, a really spectacular sight. To top it off we’ve since found out that this is an official UK site record (recorded as part of a WeBs count).
The rain came down again on the Sunday 17, making it impossible to write up the #RSPBFrampton sightings board. But it was still a good day on the reserve, with highlights of water pipit (location 7), hen harriers, merlin, and showy bank voles and a wood mouse under the visitor centre feeders.
Lovely to see the sun again on Tuesday. Some impressive views of otter over at location 8, with several thousand golden plovers on the reserve and surrounding fields providing us with some epic displays. Also reported were bewick’s swans at #RSPBFreiston reservoir.
Wednesday brought much of the same sightings, but some particularly spectacular were the 130 whooper swans at #RSPBFrampton and 2 white-fronted geese at #RSPBFreiston.
If you’ve seen our Twitter and Facebook pages recently, then you may have noticed some camera footage of a recent visitor to the reserve. Footage has helped us to confirm that we still have otters about. Trail cameras are a great way to see what wildlife is about and like you might have seen, can get you some fantastic footage. We’re planning on running a course in the new year, which is now up on Eventbrite! For more information, details are on … or you can head over to our Eventbrite page at http://rspbframptonmarsh.eventbrite.com
If you are coming to visit us, make sure to keep up to date with 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.
Reedbed, freshwater scrapes, saltmarsh and wet meadow. Frampton Marsh has it all! Come and pay us a visit soon.