Howdy folks! And welcome back to the latest edition of the Frampton Marsh recent sightings. With me, Chris the visitor guy.
And we'll start proceedings tonight with an apology to Paul Pateman. Last week I managed to misattribute Paul's wonderful photo of the sun rising over the reserve. Sorry Paul!
Um, right, best get onto the maps before I make any other mistakes...
So, return of the great white egret. And of the Jet provost, more of which later. I really can't stress enough though how showy the merlins were, with both a male and a female repeatedly coming over the reedbed in front of the visitor centre and affording great views.
As the board says, there were a lot of fieldfares about on the Sunday. Nice to have a spotted redshank too, reports of those have been sparse on the ground.
If you've been wondering what has happened about our starlings, we could see them murmurating over the other side of the river. Most irritating. However good news later in the week...
Alas, no sightings boards for Monday to Wednesday. I do know however there was a group of 25 barnacle geese about on Tuesday. Unusual for us to have so many.
Yes, the starlings are back with us. About a thousand strong on the Thursday, but...
And double that tonight. Still not all coming at once mind. There were about 1300 at once, with parties of 30-100 coming in after they'd gone down. but great to see them again. Particularly whilst doing so in the visitor centre with a hot chopcolate!
Right, so that is the maps, what about some other bits? Well, let's start off with those muntjac deer on Sunday 26 November. Ian Ellis managed to get a great video of them.
What about some photos? Well Jeremy Eyeons got this shot of whooper swans in flight
He also took this one of some of Tuesday's barnacle geese
Richard Bailey got some great photos last week, the first of which proves even common birds can provide wonderful opportunities.
Sometimes the birds just seem to pose for you, as with this skylark
Or this redshank
At other times you have to be in the right spot, as with this fly-by female merlin
Though she wasn't the only aerial predator about! As mentioned on Saturday we had another visit from the Jet Provost which is based at North Weald in Essex. Before going into private hands it served with the RAF, South Yemen and Singaporean airforces. The current colour scheme dates from its Yemeni days.
Oh, and another returning visitor, Frank the friendly pheasant is back! Well, not that friendly to be honest, he's quite timid (probably with good reason). But he can often be seen under the visitor centre bird feeders allowing you a close view of his lovely colours. Photo here is by Mark Sargeant
Now it is always nice when RSPB staff from other reserves come specially to visit you! Dave Rogers, site manager from the fantastic Lakenheath paid us a visit last weekend. He captured these wigeon as they decided they'd best be elsewhere. Possibly disturbed by a peregrine overhead.
These black-tailed godwit were similarly flighty
The ruff seemed a bit more serene
Though these two seem to have had a falling out and are ignoring each other
And this redshank is getting very iffy looks from a lapwing!
Finally, one from Neil Smith...
With a kestrel admiring the sunrise.
Right, and now an important announcement. We have a school group visiting us on Tuesday. Because of this the visitor centre and 360 hide will not be open to the public before 3 pm. The toilets will be accessible, but we regret we will not be able to serve any food or hot drinks during this time. We apologise for this disturbance, and please make your preparations accordingly.
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.
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.