Well, a nice sunny day here at lovely Frampton Marsh. And some interesting sightings to be had too.
To start with (and the excuse for one of my favourite puns), we've had a few terns through. Most have been common terns, on their way back to breeding grounds after wintering in Africa. But we have had a couple of more unusual ones. Top of which would be the roseate tern. One of our rarest breeding birds, with just a couple of breeding sites left. Similar in size to the common tern, they have a pinkish flush to the breast and much longer tail streamers. The other tern was a little tern. About a third smaller than a common tern, and it looks noticeably larger in the head. Both these birds were seen coming up off the river and saltmarsh, over the scrapes and above the reedbed.
Roseate tern by Chris Gomersall (rspb-images.com)
Sticking with smaller versions of things, in amongst the black-headed gulls today was a little gull. This is quite noticeably smaller than the black-headed gulls, with a tern-like flight. Bouyant, zig-zagging and then dipping down to pluck insects from the surface of the water.
Little gull by Neil Smith
Finally, it was warm enough to have the windows open in the visitor centre, meaning some insects came inside and got trapped. Amongst them was a particular wasp. Rather than being the familiar black and yellow scourge of picnics, this had quite a different shape and a red tail. It turns out to be a sand wasp, which digs burrows into sandy banks to house its larvae, before catching caterpillars to feed them.
Sand wasp by 'Chiswick Chap' via Wikimedia Commons
Reedbed, freshwater scrapes, saltmarsh and wet meadow. Frampton Marsh has it all! Come and pay us a visit soon.