The Latest from Lakenheath Fen- 21st August 2020

Hello to all our visitors from a windy and wild Lakenheath Fen! Today these swirling winds are stirring things up and depositing a very fine layer of black peat dust over everything! It is a new experience for me and reminds me of what it might have been like during the industrial revolution in many of our towns and cities, except this soot is of a different origin! My colleagues have told me the more technical term for this is a 'fen blow' where strong winds following dry weather can cause peat dust to swirl into clouds which can darken the sky if big and dense enough. While not many bird sightings have come out of the reserve today- mainly due to the wind- we did set a moth trap last night and caught a good variety of moths with a couple of more interesting ones shown below. There was nothing especially scarce in the trap but the Archer’s dart is a species with a local distribution and a specialist of sandy, Breckland habitats. We also caught three green carpet, one poplar hawkmoth, a first angle shades for the year (see photo), a beautiful but tiny Chinese character (a very good bird dropping mimic) and one broad-bordered yellow underwing. There were several migrant silver Y in there, with the most numerous by far being setaceous Hebrew character with probably 40 or 50 in the trap.

 Photo credit: A beautiful Archer's dart moth caught in last night's moth trap. Taken by Heidi Jones

 Photo credit: An angle shades from the same trap. Photo by Heidi Jones

This morning we found a beautiful sycamore moth caterpillar marching across the balustrade on the decking. While we don’t have any sycamore trees on the reserve, the caterpillars do also feed on field maple and horse chestnut, none of which we really have growing on the reserve aside from a scrap of field maple down in Botany Bay and that’s too far for a tiny caterpillar to walk. So what it fed on and where is currently a mystery! Here’s a lovely 

 Photo credit: Heidi Jones

When it comes to birdlife, we’ve had an interesting week and once again the sightings give a nod towards early autumn with the first snipe seen (seven on 19 August) on the Washland with seven little terns in flight on the 16 August. While the snipe will hopefully stay with us this winter, the little terns will have been passing through on migration. Yesterday we had another migrant here- but a much bigger one- an osprey, which was our second of the season. For those that follow us closely on social media, you may have seen that on Sunday 9^th August we had a white stork visit us briefly, but after a spectacular slow motion fly-by, there has been no further sightings. However a few days later a cattle egret was spotted mingling in with the cattle on the riverbank, before flying off to join the cattle at Joist Fen. It has been seen on and off since but with the last sighting on 16 August.

The Washland (or Hockwold Washes) deserves a special mention all of it’s own as recently it has been stellar in terms of the waders it has attracted- on 15 August we had no less than three wood sandpipers, four common sandpipers, two green sandpipers and seven ringed plovers. Ruff (up to three), a single greenshank, avocet (up to three) as well as the usual pair of oystercatcher, hundreds of lapwing and up to 40 black-tailed godwits are daily visitors to the Washes too.

Our quota of butterflies and dragonflies has reduced in variety a little now we move towards autumn, with brown hawker, emperor dragonfly, southern hawker and migrant hawker as well as common darter and ruddy darter making up the bulk of what you can see. Despite the wind, on the sheltered side of Trial Wood today visitors have enjoyed hundreds of ruddy darters all waiting for better weather but trying to feed in the meantime. Willow emerald damselflies are just beginning to build in number and the best place to look for these is near the Welcome Point at the Visitor Centre. They will be much more active on warm, calm days as they are delicately built and perch conspicuously on dead twigs and nettles in sheltered spots. We have a new sign up to highlight the area so if you see this, you are in the right place!

The commonest butterflies on the reserve at the moment include peacock, comma, red admiral and small tortoiseshell and they tend to congregate on the buddleia outside the Visitor Centre (near the toilet) and on any hemp agrimony flowers you find whilst out walking.

If you take a walk through the reserve on a sunny, warm day keep an eye out for common lizards in sheltered timber spots such as signposts and the Dragonfly platform. Our warden Emma took this beautiful photo at the weekend of Stumpy the Lizard enjoying his Sunday:

 Photo credit: Emma Cuthbertson.

As usual, thank you very much to our visitors for coming to see us and letting us know of your sightings, and thank you to all of our supporters. If you plan to visit in the coming days, we would recommend a walk along the riverbank to take in the expansive views across the Washes and any waders you find there. Look out too for great white egret as one had ventured down this morning (21 August) from Joist Fen for a feed there. Enjoy too the lizards and dragonflies while we still have them, especially the dainty willow emeralds!

As a quick reminder- our Car Park and trails are open from dawn to dusk now, but between the hours of 9am and 5pm our accessible toilet and Welcome Point (which serves refreshments in a takeaway format) are open too. The only facility still closed is Mere Hide but the rest of the reserve is open for all to enjoy.

With best wishes for the week ahead,

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