Good morning. Apologies for the lack of updates recently, I haven’t been around much recently. I will begin by sharing an image of the white stork that flew over the visitor centre last Thursday:
Image credit: Alan Johnson
Thank you very much to Alan for sharing this great image with us.
I led a very successful dusk walk last Friday night. We walked around Brandon Fen and we saw a barn owl hunting over the washland. It flew right past us with prey in it’s talons, which was fantastic to see. We saw a cuckoo in the grazing marsh and a common buzzard was feeding north of the river.
As we walked down the reserve, we heard two more cuckoos in the poplar woods. We walked along the hard track to look for otter spraints alongside the path. At this point, I uttered some famous last words: “I have never shown people an otter whilst I have been leading a guided walk.” I think you can guess what happened next...
We stopped at New Fen viewpoint and hey presto, there was an otter feeding in the pool right in front of the viewpoint. I literally couldn’t believe it! If you know me, you will know that I not lost for words very often. This was definitely one of those occasions!
We stopped to listen for bats near the visitor centre and we heard a couple of common pipistrelles. We also heard a serotine, which is not an easy species to track down here.
I left here at 22.10 but I was back again at 03.45 to lead a dawn walk (no rest for the wicked as they say!) We saw a roe deer in East Wood and a large drinker moth caterpillar near New Fen viewpoint.
We walked down to Joist Fen viewpoint and as we walked past the path down to Mere Hide, we saw two bearded tits. At Joist Fen viewpoint, we saw a bittern in flight and heard several cuckoos.
There was plenty going on out on the reserve on Sunday. Two cranes were seen from Joist Fen viewpoint and at least 10 hobbys were feeding overhead. Three garganeys were feeding in the river north of East Wood and a grasshopper warbler was reeling in the north west corner of New Fen North, the first area of reedbed.
We had a school visit yesterday and one of our volunteers found a common lizard in the men’s toilet! One of the parents also found a golden bloomed grey longhorn beetle in the visitor centre.
I went for a walk with my camera this morning and here are a couple of my pictures. I hope you like them:
Blue tailed damselfly:
A beautiful poppy:
Variable damselfly:
Watercress in the bog plant bed:
Image credits: David White
I just have space to tell you that most of the great tits from our nestbox with a camera in it fledged yesterday. As I type, there is still one bird in the box so hopefully it will fledge soon!
There is plenty to see at the moment so why not come and visit? We hope to see you soon!