Howdy folks! Welcome back to the Frampton Marsh recent sightings blog. With me, Chris the visitor guy!
As per usual, we will start with a browse through the sightings boards for the week.
A good mixture of birds around the reserve.
The flock of knot and godwits was several hundred strong, and impressive when disturbed by a raptor.
There have been reports of the Cetti's warbler feeding young, which is very good news
Sorry, no map for Tuesday. But I do know a wood sandpiper was seen by East hide
The number of bar-tailed godwits does seem to be dwindling away, being replace by ever more black-tailed godwits. Which is what you might really expect. Bar-tailed usually prefer saltier conditions, and can more often be found down at the river mouth.
So if those are the maps, how about the fancy photos?
Jim Crowdell caught this male yellowhammer in full song
Rather less harmonious was the relationship between these two little egrets! Bit of a dust-up going on...
David Suddards, who you can often find on duty as one of the wonderful team of centre volunteers, took his camera out the other day and got a nice selection of shots
Painted lady butterfly
Little ringed plover
Ruddy darter
Common blue damselfly
White lipped snail
Now, here is one that has been giving people a little trouble. What is it? There has been much head-scratching, but the answer is commoner than you may think.
It is.... a young starling. Quite a few of them feeding out on the scrapes and wet grassland. No sign yet of the lovely iridescent adult colours, so the plain brown feathers confuse a lot of folk.
Regular readers will know I often like to end with something by Neil Smith. So, here we go...
Black-tailed skimmer, having a rest
Tufted duck, coming in to land
Common tern, coming in to land
So, there you have it! The reserve is looking lovely by the way, lots of flowers blooming out there. The bee orchids had, alas, now gone but there is plenty of other flowers. Bird's-foot trefoil, vetches, common mallow, knapweeds... Is anyone out there good at plants? We'd love for someone to come and do a proper list for the reserve!
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.
I hope you all have a great week, stay safe, and I will catch you all next time!
Oh, and here's hoping we win in the football!
Though I don't think we should let the goose take any penalties...
Reedbed, freshwater scrapes, saltmarsh and wet meadow. Frampton Marsh has it all! Come and pay us a visit soon.