Howdy folks! Welcome back to the Frampton Marsh recent sightings. With me, Chris the Visitor Guy.
Starting to feel properly autumnal out there now. Colder nights, frosts and the odd bit of rain. What has this done to the wildlife? Well, let's see...
So, dowitcher still in its spot.
And a pretty impressive passage count of passage pomarine skuas at high tide from the river mouth.
After disappearing for the weekend, the ruddy shelduck was back on Monday
Slavonian grebes again proved the walk down to the river mouth could be worth it on Tuesday.
No map for Wednesday I'm afraid.
A mini starling murmuration has started to form over the reedbed. Just a few hundred birds at the moment, but hopefully we will get to the levels we were at a couple of years ago when a few thousand displayed nightly. Watch this space!
No map for Friday. :( Though I'm told both the dowitcher and the ruddy shelduck were present.
Right, those are the maps, what about the pretty pictures?
Steve Reynolds got a lovely shot of a spotted redshank, showing how light they now are. Much greyer than the usual redshanks. He also got a shot of the long-staying long-billed dowitcher.
The dowitcher of course is not to be confused with a snipe. Here is one of those, as taken by Matt Hazelton
Keeping a close eye on things was this short-eared owl, as photographed by Paul Pateman.
And one of our regular contributors, Jeremy Eyeons, has been having a fine old time. Here we have brent geese, whooper swans, a female sparrowhawk, and a moorhen. Check out the size of those feet!
With so much wildlife, you could say we are the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow!
Photo by Mark Sargeant.
That is it for the sightings, but a couple of important announcements.
Firstly, Toby our warden will be running a digiscoping workshop on Saturday, at 1 pm. £15 for non-members, £12 for members. He will help you take wonderful photos with just your smart phone and a normal spotting scope. Please ask at the visitor centre to book your place.
Secondly, now we are into November, the visitor centre will be on winter opening hours. So it will be open from 9:30 am until 4 pm.
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. Oh, and remember we do now sell filled rolls in the visitor centre for all your lunchtime needs. Also now, the tide tables for next year are in. Just £1 and you can plan your birdwatching trips to Frampton, Freiston, Titchwell and Snettisham for the entirety of 2019! 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!
Reedbed, freshwater scrapes, saltmarsh and wet meadow. Frampton Marsh has it all! Come and pay us a visit soon.