Howdy folks, and welcome back to the Frampton Marsh recent sightings. With me, Chris the visitor guy!
And I hope you are all having a fun and productive Big Garden Birdwatch. Remember, even low numbers count! So Please make sure you spend just an hour recording what birds use your garden, or the local park. We have done the office garden here at Frampton. Not the centre feeders though, don't think we can really call those as part of a 'garden'. And adding 20 wigeon onto the list might skew the results rather!
So, what has been about then? Time to hop into the time machine, and look at the previous week's worth of maps.
So that is the dowitcher still with us, hen harriers still over the saltmarsh, the cape shelduck still lurking about with the Canadas, Bewick's swans still arriving with the whoopers at dusk, and the voles still popping out under the centre feeders. Nice!
Added extra goodies on the Sunday were water rail and water pipit. Though better water rail views the following day...
If you have not heard the news, there are a couple of ridiculously confiding water rails over at Titchwell, allowing people to get withing a few metres of them. Great for photos. Well not to be out done, on the Monday we had a water rail parade around under the centre feeders for a short while. Before it realised that the guide books call it shy, and it scuttled off into undergrowth.
Tuesday was a day for waders, with both little stint and green sandpiper being seen.
And a jack snipe followed them up the very next day
A couple of spoonbills at Freiston were very nice on the Thursday
And after a couple of days of lurking, the dowitcher was back out on the Friday. Just in time for the weekend!
The colder weather this week meant we had some icy days. Cue some great photos of ducks standing around on the ice!
A couple of wigeon by Macca...
A pair of wigeon by Jeremy Eyeons, and also a nice drake teal
And this drake wigeon by Neil Smith. It looks like it just broke through the ice, landed in the water and is going "Woooheee, that's cold!"
These whooper swans are also in a bit of a frosty scene. Thanks to Paul Pateman for this one.
Nigel Sprowell uploaded this smart drake pintail, flying greylags and a hunting kestrel
And Alan Brewster got this goldfinch in lovely light
The same sort of light that Jeremy Eyeons used to show this starling off to best effect
Finally, another Neil Smith. This time of a lovely lapwing.
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 the weather turns out to be colder than you'd planned on, you can buy hats, scarves and gloves, lovingly knitted by our lovely volunteers, from the visitor centre.
All the best, take care, and I will catch you next time!
Chris