Visitors to Lakenheath Fen are intrigued by the construction work underway on the lawn outside the visitor centre. Clearly the early stages of some amazing new project, but what.....
Photo credit: Ali Blaney – can you guess what it is yet?
We’ve had some good suggestions so far, the more gruesome ones won’t be featuring in this blog(!) but the closest so far is a new swimming or paddling pool. On a day like today that idea sounds great but it’s not quite correct. This is of course the start of our project to create raised plant beds. There will be four in total, showcasing the plants that can be found in different habitats at Lakenheath Fen. The one in the photograph is going to be the damp fen/marsh/bog plant bed, either side of this one will be a pond (swimming pool for frogs, toads, newts, rather than the staff) and a Breckland sandy bed. Last but not least, a ‘wildlife friendly gardening’ bed will appear beneath our office windows, to give our visitors ideas for their own gardens. It’ll be exciting to watch these progress over the autumn and winter.
So far Dave has been cracking on with this heavy work pretty much single-handedly, with a bit of help from his chainsaw and Tuesday volunteer Nigel. Katherine and I have been busy brushcutting, the recent rain and warm weather has caused a sudden surge in grass growth! The trails out the back of the visitor centre have been tackled, as has the trail between Joist Fen viewpoint and the riverbank. As always, bear with us as we strive to keep the trails accessible and open for you all!
The work party last week involved just a small number of us so we headed over to our land north of the river to pull ragwort there. Dave and I were very pleased to spot a yellow wagtail, a bird that had eluded us thus far this year. And speaking of ‘firsts’ I managed to top that this week with a ‘first EVER’ – the osprey that has been here for a few days now. I was alerted to its presence via an excited text from Dave on Sunday and was very much hoping it would still be around when I returned to work on Tuesday, and thankfully it was. Katherine, Tuesday volunteer John and I were very lucky to see the bird at quite close range down in Botany Bay, where it seems to be spending some of its time. It has also been spotted fishing over the washland and Joist Fen reedbed. It appeared again this morning over the washland and our volunteers were very happy to start their day with views of this fine bird.
We had another interesting occurrence last Friday afternoon, this time involving dragonflies. Whilst busy working on my Brandon Fen territory maps (see last weeks blog) I glanced out of the office window and the area of grassland and poplars between the visitor centre and car park was absolutely alive with dragonflies. Closer inspection revealed they were mainly migrant hawkers, patrolling back and forth over the same 'beat'. It was a great sight to see.
Photo credit: Ali Blaney - juvenile migrant hawker
Apologies for the slightly dubious photo, I confess this wasn't taken on the reserve but in my garden and this was as close as I could creep before it took flight!
With plenty of sunshine around the insects are still plentiful - dragonflies, damselflies and butterflies aplenty as well as grasshoppers and bush-crickets. Katherine and I saw a couple of ladybirds today too, one of which is shown below. People often comment they don't see as many ladybirds around as they used to, so if you do see a ladybird be sure to report it to the UK Ladybird Survey, records like this then contribute to important research such as the recent State of Nature report - I'm off to report ours right now!
Photo credit: Ali Blaney - 2-spot ladybird