Howdy folks! Welcome back to the Frampton Marsh recent sightings blog. Not with me, Chris the Visitor Guy, because we now have Poppy to write it for us instead. Hopefully she will soon be able to post direct, but in the meantime I have to put her blogs up for her. Let's see what she has to say in this double-sized bumper edition!
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Hello again folks! Apologies for the delay in getting the blog out recently, it’s been very busy around here. So, to make up for this this sightings blog will be a special ‘bumper’ edition. The weather has certainly started to change up a bit, time to start bringing out the hats and thermals I think!
Our stars of the show between the 17 and 23 October were: purple sandpiper (location 1), little stint (location 2), curlew sandpiper (location 3), spotted redshank (location 4), whinchat (location 5).
We kicked off the sighting’s week with some fab weather for our #LetNatureSing takeover on the 17th. We had birdsong as our soundtrack for the day at the visitor centre, helping to do our bit to spread the message that nature needs our help! There was plenty to see about the reserve too. With views of goldeneye on the reedbed (location 6), gannet seen on the saltmarsh (location 5), raptors galore and plenty of our highlights about.
The purple sandpiper was showing well on the Friday, regardless of the afternoon showers. There were also brilliant views of geese and golden plover in flight over on the wet grassland at location 7. We had good numbers of birds moving into the weekend, with more still arriving each day. With the increase in bird numbers, we’ve also had an increase in bird of prey sightings (unfortunate for some, like the starling you may have seen pictured on twitter!)
The weekend clearly isn’t just a busy time for us, with plenty to see at Frampton (particularly on the Saturday). Red-throated diver, black brant, red-breasted merganser all at the river mouth (roughly at location 8. Great views of waders moving between the reedbed, scrapes and wet grassland. Seen on both days, the bank vole was spotted at the visitor centre.
It was our Big Plastic Clean-Up at the reserve on 22 October. This was kindly supported by SC Johnson. I’d like to say a massive thank you to all the volunteers who helped with the clean up along the river mouth. We were lucky to have some good weather! We ended the day with some sightings of bullfinch (location 9) and bearded tit (location 5). Overall a glorious day, with views of the 5,000 or so golden plover around at the moment, winter spectacles are building nicely and the peregrines seem to be enjoying themselves.
We ended the week nicely with some cracking sights, a bonus firecrest for some of the early visitors on 23 October at location 10.
Our stars of the show for this week (24 – 31 October) were: woodcock (location 11), spotted redshank (location 1), great-white egret (location 5), bearded tit (location 5).
A wet start to the ‘sighting week’ on Thursday 24, but still some great sights on the reserve. Merlin and sparrowhawk both around on the reedbed. With the water rail still lurking about the reedbed at location 12 providing some good views from the visitor centre.
Moving through the week we had brambling and weasel action from the visitor centre on the Friday. Flocks of wigeon and golden plovers are continuing to grow, you can catch some spectacular views by looking out over to the wet grassland areas of the reserve.
Good weekend sights with the spotted redshank back over on the scrapes at location 1 and a nippy start to this week. But this hasn’t stopped the wildfowl numbers, which are continuing to grow. A particular highlight for this week were the bearded tit sightings becoming a daily occurrence.
Pomarine skua on the wet grassland at location 13 on Thursday afternoon, with recent highlights like the great white egret and bearded tits continuing to make appearances.
IMPORTANT NOTICE: North scrape footpath is closed for ditch works (Highlighted on the map by red line). Access to East Hide will be available via Sea Bank steps.
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.