It only seems like yesterday that I last blogged! In fact, it’s been five whole days. A lot of the things we have been doing over that time have involved working with children – the animal part of the title is inevitable! On Saturday we had our first wild camp out of the year, which David mentioned in his blog. During the camp out they heard and saw all sorts of birds and bats, including a stone curlew, which is very exciting. Today we had our first visit of the week from the Guildhall Feoffment Community Primary School and what a day they picked. Perfect weather for being outdoors, although if I'm being picky, the breeze could have been slightly lighter to entice out a few more insects. Activities for the children included a guided walk led by Katherine, owl pellet dissection led by David and our work experience pupil Lizzie, mini-beast hunting with field teacher Sarah and pond dipping with yours truly.
So I spent all day out by the pond, helping the children dip and identify their creatures. We had some great catches throughout the day including toad tadpoles (toadpoles?), water scorpions, damselfly nymphs, cased caddis fly larvae and even dragonfly nymphs which is excellent. My rough identification of these nymphs led me to believe they were broad-bodied chasers. Unfortunately I didn't have my camera on me to get a picture of the nymphs themselves (maybe I'll remember on Friday!) so here is a photo of a newly emerged broad-bodied chaser, which is what those nymphs will soon become.
Photo credit: Ali Blaney - newly emerged broad-bodied chaser
The children were very well behaved and everyone had a grand time taking part in all the different sessions. On Friday we have another group coming from the same school so lets hope they have just as much success around the dipping pool. Don't forget that you can have a go yourselves if you pay us a visit, just ask in the visitor centre.
In other news we've been doing some more strimming. We've finished the edge of the access track although it still needs raking (this will happen tomorrow) and also commenced the underwater strimming at Joist Fen viewpoint. This also needs finishing off which we'll do as soon as possible! Otherwise the reeds grow up and restrict the view across the pool. Hopefully we'll have tomorrow afternoon to finish off some of these tasks, in the morning we'll be carrying out our first bittern watch (we've previously been carrying out bittern 'listens') so you may spot a fair few of us dotted around the edge of the reedbeds. It's the first of our long sessions, from 8am until about 12.30pm. Sun cream will be a must I think and it's about time the cowboy hat made an appearance! We'll be watching for any potential feeding flights to and from nests and will of course keep you up to date.
Finally, just to quickly mention our visiting rarities - we thought the red-footed falcon had finally departed but it is still being spotted, although it's being more mobile around the reserve than previously. The most recent confident sighting was yesterday, just past New Fen North reedbed (the first one you come to) near West Wood. We had another possible sighting near the same location this morning. The Savi's warbler was also heard this morning. An exciting record for today is little tern, three of which were spotted hunting over the washland. Once the school visit was over we all dashed up there to get a nice view of them. It took a while for good positioning and the right light but we were finally able to see the yellow bill and the size difference between them and a common tern (which was also hunting nearby) was obvious to see. The little tern being littler of course! A nice new bird for the list.
Photo credit: RSPB Images - Little tern