Those of you who read our blog regularly may have noticed that all of the posts have a) come from me and b) have had a specific "recent sightings" theme. This is mainly because a) Ali has been on her "luna de miel" in Spain and b) recent sightings posts are what I do best. However, this morning I thought I would take a slightly different tact and tell you a bit about my working weekend!
After having celebrated its 18th birthday last week, the reserve celebrated another significant birthday yesterday. The Lakenheath Kingfishers Wildlife Explorers club celebrated its fifth birthday! We celebrated in style with a well attended meeting. After a quiz about the history of the reserve, we went for a walk to see what we could see.....
We started off by looking for creepy crawlies between the visitor centre and the car park. After lifting up lots of logs, we had quite an impressive list. This included several woodlouse, a harvestman and a centipede. This was followed by a look for some mammal tracks and signs. We found mainly rabbit tracks, but also a few roe deer tracks and even some signs of where the local badgers have been which was very exciting.
It was then time for the obligatory group photographs. As the weather was OK, we decided to taken them on and around our new wildlife sculptures:
Image credits: Hazel Neal
Just in case you are wondering, I am the child in the middle of the pictures wearing the RSPB jacket!
We then returned to the visitor centre for some yummy chocolate cake and some messy chaos (we made fat ball feeders!) All in all, it was a great party and was enjoyed by all. I then spent the afternoon putting the group programme for next year together whilst occasionally helping John with the redesign of our sightings board in the visitor centre:
Image credit: David White
The basic idea is as follows: We have split the board into areas of the reserve .i.e. reedbed, washland, Brandon Fen etc. and put down which species you may find on a typical visit to them. We have also introduced a star system to give you an impression of how likely you are to see those species. Generally speaking, three stars means: "expect to see", two stars means: "you have a good chance of seeing" and one star means: "if you are lucky, you will see." This will change from month to month so hopefully everyone will find it useful!
This leads me nicely on to this morning. I noticed some interesting fungi south of Trial Wood last Sunday but have kept forgetting about them over the course of the week. Luckily, I finally remembered them this morning and went out armed with my camera..........
An impressive giant puffball:
...And some equally impressive shaggy ink caps:
There was then just enough time to take a photo from my favourite point on the reserve (which is on the south west corner of New Fen North by the way!):
I hope you have enjoyed this insight into my typical working weekend! We hope to see you soon.