Howdy folks! Time for Poppy to give us the latest reserve news...
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Hello folks! Welcome back to the Frampton Marsh recent sightings blog. For another week with me, Poppy. Recent highlights have included purple sandpiper, little stint, short-eared owl, spotted redshank, curlew sandpiper and great-white egret. Let’s get down to it, shall we?
Curlew sandpiper seemed to be sticking about on the reserve scrapes (location 1), although hasn’t been spotted in the last few days. We started the week off nicely with views of great-white egret moving between areas of the wet grassland (location 2), spotted redshank (location 3) and rock pipit (location 4). We even managed some sightings of noctule bats over the reedbed at dusk. With sightings of the water rail around the visitor centre. To add to the Friday list, students from Haven High managed to catch not one… but two great diving beetles while pond dipping in the afternoon!
Similar sightings on the reserve over the weekend, with the addition of further sightings of the kingfisher moving between location 4 and 5. Whooper swan are around, moving between the scrapes and reedbed (location 6). We had a wet start to Sunday (13th), but a purple sandpiper (location 3) on the reserve in the afternoon was certainly a highlight.
Plenty to see about on the reserve at the start of this week, with the winter wildfowl numbers increasing. Still sightings of some of our usual summer visitors, swallows, dropping in for a kip while on their migration south. We had roughly 30 in to roost on Tuesday 15th at location 7.
Another busy day at Frampton on the Wednesday (16th). Purple sandpiper still about on the reserve, our 36th wader species of the year! With sightings of hen harrier (location 8), which has been the last of our #BigFive to settle in. Also around the saltmarsh we have had sightings of ringtail, short-eared owl, marsh harrier and merlin.
Spotted redshank by Ian Bollen
Soon it will be half-term and that means the return of our Trick or Treat Treasure Trail! Running from 19 to the 27 October, be sure to join us for your chance to win a tasty treat (no trick!). For more information just visit our website or head over to our Facebook page
IMPORTANT NOTICE: North scrape footpath is closed for ditch works from October 15 until the end of November. (Highlighted on the map by red line). Access to East Hide will be available via Sea Bank steps.
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.