After the last blog post, we have another bee-related sighting. Though this time the expression 'the birds and the bees' can be used figuratively too.

Leaving the office yesterday, Toby the warden came across a mating pair of bees on the path. Really rather impressive in size, the female had a much smaller male on her back. Normally they fly into the air to mate. But I guess the chap had been eating too many…

Bee orchids that is.

Yesterday we received a report of some bee orchids flowering on the reserve. So after work I set out to look for them. Sure enough, over by the East hide I found this lovely example.

Bee orchids are commonest in the south and east of the UK, and is the county flower of Bedfordshire.  The flowers themselves bear a passing resemblence to a bee, both in colour and texture. In the Mediterranean, pollination…

It isn't often I talk about Freiston Shore on here. This is the Frampton Marsh blog after all. But we do sometimes run events there, and last night it was a high tide walk.

Freiston Shore is our sister reserve, the other side of Boston and another great place to see wading birds. The sea comes in closer at Freiston than it does at Frampton, and on high tides waders get pushed right up off the mudflats on The Wash…

Today is the launch of the RSPBs biggest ever campaign called Giving Nature a Home. The RSPB think big and build homes for nature on a large scale all across the country but by making small changes you can build a home for nature where you live. Simple things like having a patch of longer grass in your garden or growing flowering plants can make a big difference.

Here at Frampton Marsh we have our very own wildlife garden…

This week Toby Collett our new warden started work with us here at Lincolnshire Wash Reserves. He’s been getting to know his way around and having the usual induction that goes with starting any new job. Toby has always been a keen birdwatcher, regularly visiting reserves from when he was little. After studying Wildlife and Countryside Conservation at college he carried out some work in the Scottish Highlands doing upland…

Did you know 15^th-23^rd June is Bike week? This is a national initiative to encourage people to cycle, whether it is for fun or as a way of getting around. As part of this, RSPB staff up and down the country are ditching their cars and biking to work.

Cycling not only has great health benefits, it’s environmentally friendly too. It produces no pollution and reduces congestion on the roads. Climate change is a threat to…

So what is newsworthy about that? People spot redshanks all the time on the reserve. It was the reason we started here, back in 1984, as it was one of the best redshank breeding sites in the country.

No, I'm not talking about normal redshanks. I'm talking a spotted redshank.

Slightly larger than the usual sort, in winter you might be hard pushed to notice the difference. But at this time of year, birds are starting…

Do you remember your childhood? Jumping in puddles, kicking up leaves, rolling down hills... All good fun, wasn't it? And something else that was fun was looking for sticklebacks, tadpoles and other creatures in ponds. Well, it is time to relive your youth this weekend, with 'Pond dipping for adults'.

Trawling a net through the water to see what you catch has always been a popular activity for our younger…

A few goodies around at the weekend. Curlew sandpiper on the reedbed, male garganey, pectoral sandpiper still hanging around. but over the last few days the highlight has been with our black terns.

Black terns are freshwater terns, as opposed to marine terns like the common and arctic terns. They used to be a common bird in the fens, but the widespread drainage of such places coupled with egg collecting really had a…

Now we've got the pond dipping up and running, I've been doing some research on the pond life you might find. We have a range of creatures in our pond including smooth newts, water boatman, lots of sticklebacks, diving beetles, freshwater shrimp and dragonfly nymphs. All of these animals are amazing in different ways. Dragonfly nymphs can live for up to 5 years before they're ready to become adult dragonflies and are…

No, we haven't been visited by Kate Moss and Helena Christensen (more is the pity). Instead we had news early this morning that two black-winged stilts had appeared on the reserve.

Black-winged stilts are rather elegant wading birds that winter in Africa but breed in western Europe. Britain is very much at the edge of their range, and the UK gets a few records every year. Most famous of these was 'Sammy', who stayed…

It was a great family fun day here at Frampton Marsh, even the sun came out! We have regular family fun days throughout the year, where kids can come and do craft activities in the visitor centre and have a great time doing so. Today we were making pipecleaner dragonflies, making bird feeders from apples and creating origami frogs. Facepainting also happens, great to see what the kids want to be!

 Photo by Simon Rummer…

Well, not actually today. Still rather grey. But the last weather report I saw for the weekend looks somewhat promising for decent weather. So what might you find if you come down to Frampton?

Well, on the birds front, three curlew sandpipers are being regularly seen on the wet grassland. One in full breeding colours too, very nice! A spoonbill is often on the scrapes and the turtle doves are still in the hedgerow. Mediterranean…

Any recent visitors to Frampton Marsh will have noticed some cute and fluffy looking avocet chicks strutting about. Whilst carrying out some jobs on the scrapes I noticed a rather distressed adult avocet, alarm-calling in flight. I thought nothing of it and assumed that it was complaining about its noisy neighbours, the black-headed gulls!

 I then walked into to the 360-degree hide and much to my surprise there was an…

The avocet chicks have started hatching, and little balls of grey fluff on long legs are tottering about. Carefully shephered by their attentive parents. But sometimes things can go wrong...

One party of chicks strayed too close to where a coot was nesting. Now coots are not exactly renowned for their laid-back attitude to life. In fact, they can really be quite territorial. So this one quickly took umbrage at the intrusion…

The bird feeders are proving very popular at the moment both with the birds and visitors. We've had a good variety of species and regularly get chaffinch, greenfinch, yellowhammer, tree sparrow and goldfinch, sometimes all at the same time! I was in the visitor centre yesterday enjoying watching the little birds along with some visitors who sat there for over 30 minutes. They're certainly getting through the seed quickly…

You know, I really shouldn't know some of these cultural references. I'm much younger than that!

But what a stonking weekend. OK, Saturday was a bit grey and cloudy. But wasn't Sunday a lovely day? Great to see so many people out on the reserve enjoying it.

The birds did their part too, with some exciting sightings. And yes, the Temminck's stint was amongst them. Plus five of its mates. We had six stints…

Or Madam, we aren't sexist here at Framton Marsh.

So, what is about that you might like to see this weekend?

Well, top of the list would be the two Temminck's stints that have been out on the reserve for a day or two. not always the easiest birds to see. Your best bet is probably to be in the East Hide, often looking out over the wet grassland towards the seabank. Check the edges of the pools and channels there…

One of the two geocaching trails around the reserve required some work on it. So I have been busy doing that all morning

So, what is geocaching? Well, simply put, it is a treasure hunt. Various items are hidden, and then their GPS coordinates are posted on a website www.geocaching.com and the idea is for other people to try to find them. When they do, they leave their name on a piece of paper that is inside the hidden…

It is time to introduce a new feature to the blog. Over the coming year we will give a little bit of extra info about some of the wonderful wildlife that makes Frampton Marsh its home. To start with, let's look at one of our most familiar (and yet maybe underrated) birds, the lapwing.

Lapwings are a wading birds, just over medium size, with rounded black and white wings. When they are on the gorund you can see the…

One of the advantages of actually working on a reserve like Frampton is that you can often do a bit of birding on a whim. So, at 5:30 yesterday having finished work, I decided to pop down to the reserve to see what was about.

To start with, it really wasn't that promising. Dark clouds were looming and the wind was gusting along. So rather than go right out to the East hide, I figured a trip to the 360 hide was in order…

The wind has calmed down a bit here at the reserve but we've still had some antics today! If you've been down to the reserve recently you may have noticed we have some sheep grazing near the visitor centre and around the reedbed. Well this morning one of them decided 'the grass was greener on the other side', (of the fence that is!) and made a run for it. Back-up had to be called and there were about 5…

Well the cow GPS collars turned up today and we thought it would be fun to test them out on some of the staff. Here we are vaguely pretending to be grazing cows!

These collars do have a more serious purpose however! They will be strapped around the necks of cows and used to track where the cattle go on the saltmarsh. This is to see if cows are affecting redshanks by trampling on their nests and so is quite an important…

The conversation went something like this.....

Me (speaking from Frampton office): "Hi Graham, how are you?"

Graham (RSPB Reserve Ecologist based in Bedfordshire): "Oh so you've phoned up to gloat then have you?"

Me: "No.....er....what about?"

Graham: "Being the first RSPB reserve to have a stilt this year?"

Me: "What!....where?"

Graham: "It's been on all the…

What a lovely bank holiday Monday it was! The sun was out, temperatures were up and we had a lot of happy visitors wandering around the reserve. So nice to meet everyone and to hear the very positive comments about the site.

In terms of birdlife, highlight of Monday is probably the very showy wood sandpiper. This will be on its way back to its breeding ground in northern Scotland, after spending the winter down in Africa…