Frampton Marsh recent sightings: 3 - 9 September 2016

Howdy folks! And welcome to another edition of the Frampton Marsh recent sightings. With me, Chris the visitor guy.

Well, the quantity of curlew sandpipers might have eased off a bit, but they are still here in good numbers. Other waders too. What, we're an East coast wetlands site, in autumn. That was a surprise? Anyway, let's go look at some maps...

Don't be misled by the simplicity of the map. There are a lot of birds out there. And showing very closely too. Both the greenshank at #2 and the wood sandpiper on the scrapes were within mere feet of observers. The Temminck's stints were proving a tad elusive though. As is fairly usual for the species.

Of course, one of the problems is to separate out the Temminck's stints from the little stints. So let's see....

Little stint (Neil Smith)

Temminck's stint (Ron Knight via Wikipedia)

So, can you spot the differences? The easy ones are Temminck's have yellow legs as opposed to black ones on the little stint. The latter also has white 'braces' running down its back. I always find littles tend to be happier around other birds too, whilst Temminck's prefer to be somewhere quieter. But that be just me!

Right, onwards! Or I suppose technically backwards....

Yes, more waders!

Sorry for making you squint, Toby was anxious to get all the sightings onto the centre 'out of hours' map! This was the first sight of the Temminck's stint, up to four of them.

Again, sorry for the small writing.

Interesting record of the turtle dove there. Is this their last sighting? They should be heading back down to Africa now. You may have read that the RSPB and partners have satellite tagged six birds in an attempt to understand where they go, with a view to reversing their decline. One of these was caught here at Frampton Marsh. We're happy to be playing our part in hopefully securing the future of this lovely bird.

Ah yes, you may have noticed mention of the bees before. The sea aster is out (look for the purpley flowers with the yellow centres) and so too therefore are the sea aster mining bees. Possibly the UK's rarest bees. Certainly it got at least one of our visitors excited!

https://twitter.com/RyanClarkNature/status/772498905481216000

Ahem yes. I think I might have been a bit punch drunk after six weeks of school holiday activities! I'd initially forgotten to write the numbers on the map. The unicorn was an unusual sighting too, possibly a first for reserve. one we'd rather not have seen though. Please don't release balloons (or even fill them with helium).

Right, so I think that is the best of the sightings. No moth trapping tonight, I've seen the weather report! I will have a go at it on Saturday night though, weather permitting. If i get away with it, I'll be opening up the trap on Sunday morning.

If you want to get these maps and other sightings without waiting for the weekly blog posts, don't forget to watch our Twitter feed https://twitter.com/RSPBNorfolkLinc. You don't need to be on Twitter yourself, we've kept it so everyone can see what we are talking about.

So there you have it. Hope you all have a great weekend, stay safe and I'll see you all next week.