Frampton Marsh recent sightings blog: 10 October 2019

Howdy folks!

Apologies for the lack of sightings blogs over the last month or so. A combination of leave and illness have kept me from doing any. But fear not! Into the breach steps our newest residential volunteer, Poppy....

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Hello folks! Welcome back to what is now a bit of a catch-up sightings blog. With me, Poppy (alternatively to Chris!). I am the latest addition to the residential team here at Frampton.

Potentially a short one this week, with some highlights and a summary of what has been about recently. So, where to begin?

Well the water rail has been a consistent sight for us, starting off spending most of its time around the visitor centre at the start of the week. Moving on over to the scrapes more recently, with good potential for viewings from the 360 hide. Also around the scrapes, we have had some great sightings of spotted redshank, greenshank, little stint and curlew sandpipers as well as lots of other waders. We are still getting sightings of avocet around location 6 and there are still some remaining swallows.

We have also had some pretty mobile species about, such as the stonechat which has been spotted between north scrape path and the reedbed hide (location 2). And the cetti’s warbler which has been heard in the hedgerows heading up to the sea bank (location 3). We have also had sightings of kingfisher at location 4.

There’s been rather spectacular sights of the local peregrines (location 5 and 6). I was lucky to have a flyover myself yesterday evening at dusk (October 9). Over the summer these peregrines were often seen as the big adult female hunting and a younger male (presumably one of this year’s Boston chicks).

Over to the eastern edge of the reserve we have the saltmarsh (location 5). Wheatears are still making appearances on the other side of the sea bank and further out we’ve had fantastic sightings of short-eared owls. In fact, we had seven! 

Whooper swans have been around the reserve around location 6, however were since spotted on the reservoir (location 7) on the 9 October. Brent geese and pink-footed geese are making their way in and are also settling around the scrapes.

IMPORTANT NOTICE: North scrape footpath will be closed for ditch works from October 15 until the end of November. Access to East Hide will be available via Sea Bank steps. (affected area highlighted on the map by red line).

That’s it for another week. Hopefully sightings blogs shall be back to normal as of this month. If you are coming to visit us, make sure to keep up to date with 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.