The latest from Lakenheath Fen - 18 November 2022

Hello to all and welcome to the first blog in a few weeks. Various other things have got in the way of me sitting down to update you all about the wildlife sightings and news from the reserve recently, but here we are at long last. A fair few of our November days so far have been wet ones- sometimes windy too- and although this doesn't make for quite as nice a walk as a sunny blue-sky day, we have welcomed every drop of rain with open arms. Following such a dry summer, we badly need as much as we can get. The water levels across the reserve have risen considerably- thanks to the rainfall and our abstracting (taking) water off the river since 1 November. 

Wildlife Sightings

Today (18 November) started well when a quick walk before work rewarded me with 8 little grebe fishing in the river, just east of the Washland Viewpoint- they were bobbing up and down in the first bend as the watercourse heads around to the south towards the Wilton Bridge. This time last week (11 November) our Friday volunteers spotted a bittern in the same bend of the river at lunchtime. The little grebes were still there during the early afternoon today, along with two great white egret, one little egret, around 20 shoveler and 8 gadwall. We have had pintail recorded on some days too- between one and three individuals- I expect they are always up there but not always visible to observers on the riverbank, due to the large area that is flooded and the ample marshy vegetation around the edges that could so easily disguise them! If you are walking along the riverbank around dawn or dusk, you stand a fair chance of seeing whooper swans flying overhead as they arrive at or leave their Washland roost, as well as flushing a woodcock or two that may have settled close to the path the night before. Water pipit, corn bunting and pied wagtail are some of the smaller bird species that use the rough vegetation down the sides of the bank to roost in, so you may see these dropping in one by one as darkness descends. 

On 10 November, David white came up to the reserve in the evening and recorded a dunlin flying overhead at dusk, an Egyptian goose in the river and he also heard a Chinese water deer barking from within New Fen. This is a species we record every now and again on the reserve- perhaps twice a year- but they seem to be becoming more common. Another species that we are seeing more often is raven- our Health & Safety volunteer Mark had one flying around overhead today (18 November)- and throughout autumn we have had multiple sightings of these large and majestic corvids. Chinese water deer wasn't our only mammal record in November- recently visitors enjoyed watching a stoat at the weekend (13 November), which was seen multiple times running along the track from the car park to the Visitor Centre, and a muntjac deer tends to hang around in the car park and at the back of the Visitor Centre pond too. 

In the reserve's interior, our marsh harrier roost has now built up to at least 22 birds- these will best be admired from Joist Fen Viewpoint, looking west towards Botany Bay. From here, you can see a considerable part of our entire reedbed area, which is why it is usually a successful spot to look. You may be able to spot the roof of the old bungalow from here- this is around 2km away and between you and the bungalow is a patchwork of scrub and reedbed. 

Kingfisher and bearded tit sightings have been recorded on some days from Mere Hide, and at the Visitor Centre feeders we are beginning to see the first siskin settle on the sunflower heart feeder now. These are strictly winter visitors for us and although we have heard them in the tops of the alder trees for some weeks (likely feeding on the seeds in the cones) and it is only when they begin to run out of seeds in the cones that they move onto our feeders and down into the eyelines of visitors! Great spotted woodpecker, long-tailed tits and marsh tits are fairly frequent visitors to the feeding tables too.

Whilst things are very quiet on the insect front now, two common darters were seen basking in Wednesday's sunshine on the raised middle bed in front of the Visitor Centre. These tough dragonflies are by far our last species on the wing each year and can persist until the end of November if we escape frosts until then. We may yet see another peacock or brimstone butterfly on a mild day... you never know!

Reserve news

Yesterday was a bleak sort of day but the work party soldiered on through the rain, getting soggy sandwiches whilst they spent hours cutting areas of reedbed as habitat management for species like bittern. Now is the time of year when we can cut the reeds (on a rotational basis) when there is no danger of harming nesting birds or mammals. Here they are, smiling through it all:

 Photo credit: Tanya Bryan

Earlier in the year, I mentioned in a blog that our reserve team were using some DNA sample kits to test the water on the reserve for the presence of different species in our watercourses. In the past few days, we have had the results back and these are the species whose DNA was in the river here at the time of sampling:

 

We also had a ditch on the reserve sampled, which only tested positive for an unspecified duck species, and for moorhen. This is less exciting, but given our dry summer where parts of the reserve dried out almost completely, perhaps it is too soon for the ditches to be full again with the droppings of a range of mammals and birds!

I hope this blog has been a useful one. If you are planning to visit us this weekend, please do pop in after your visit to let us know what you saw on your walk around- the more sightings we have, the more we know what is going on in the reserve and the better the information we can provide to future visitors.

With best wishes for a happy weekend,

Heidi Jones (Visitor Experience Officer, RSPB Lakenheath Fen).