I'll start off with the ssssnakes (and the dragonfly of course), just to keep you happy! The benches are finally in place and they look amazing, even if we do say so ourselves! Katherine and our volunteers installed them nice and securely by the dipping platform last week:
Photo credit: Ali Blaney - Katherine with volunteers Phil and Robert
Photo credit: Ali Blaney - Dragonfly bench
I think you'll agree they look great. The photos don't do them justice either, as they don't show the amount of detail that has been painted onto the dragonfly wings. The dragonfly has been painted to look like a southern hawker and thanks go to volunteer Rob for his artistic control over the dragonfly! Everyone who got involved has done a grand job.
Staying on the subject of snakes, grass snake sightings are on the increase which is exciting, and some of our visitors were lucky enough to see a large individual in front of New Fen North viewpoint this morning. It swam across the pool, slithered out onto the bank right in front of them, travelled a short distance then went back into the water and swam off. My only grass snake sighting this year has been a very small, young snake trying to get into the gents toilets - hopefully I'll be lucky like those visitors and have a better sighting soon!
We've been completing the work at the fen pools near the visitor centre over the past few days. While we finished the physical work of creating the viewing portals into the pools with the railways sleepers a couple of weeks ago, the pools have unfortunately remained dry. So we've been pumping water out of Brandon Fen and into the pools and they've been filling up nicely - as you'll see in the photos below it wasn't long before we had visitors!
Photo credit: Ali Blaney - pumping the water in
Photo credit: Ali Blaney - The Fen Pool Appreciation Society
We've pumped in more water than it appears we need really, but as the ground is so dry we need to get it saturated first before the pools will hold water for any length of time.
I'll move on to a brief overview of our surveys. Territory surveying continues and things are definitely hotting up. I saw and heard many blackcaps and whitethroats around Brandon Fen and it was lovely to stop for a while and appreciate their song. I then encountered my survey surprise - I'd been thinking it strange that I hadn't seen a blackbird by that point, then I thought 'aha, there's one' - but it turned out to be the ring ouzel! And I didn't just see it the once - although it had flown off, once I'd completed my loop it had returned to its original position and I saw it again! It was still being spotted today too. I also spotted the wheatear in the grazing marsh which was lovely to see, it's a very obliging wheatear that has been showing well so do make a point of going down to see it in Brandon Fen if you're coming for a visit. Suzanne and Dave saw and heard a cuckoo during their survey at the western end of the reserve and also saw a lot of bittern action, which although not part of their transect, is still worthy of note. Suzanne saw three bitterns in flight over Norfolk Fen whilst also hearing another individual boom at the same time. We then had another report of two bitterns in flight at the same time over New Fen North - so we have at least six birds on site, including some females! We have another booming bittern survey tomorrow so we'll see how things go then.
Last but certainly not least, onto the sunshine. It's been such a lovely day here today that I couldn't not mention it. I led our weekly, free guided walk today known as the Wednesday Walkabout and it was very nice to be out around the reserve, talking about the work we do and pointing out the flora and fauna of Lakenheath to our visitors. Butterflies were everywhere today, with many peacocks, brimstones and green-veined whites about. We also saw a male orange-tip and a small white. Warblers were warbling with gusto, particularly the whitethroats which seemed to be everywhere! We had a a good number of visitors today too and everyone was enjoying the fine weather. It certainly lifts the spirits to feel the sun on your skin, see butterflies aplenty, hear beautiful bird song all around and get close to nature. And what better way to end such a walk than with a delicious ice cream back at the visitor centre. I went for Norfolk gooseberry - very refreshing (but I still prefer the chocolate fudge brownie)!