Please note that the Spooky Hallowe'en Walk tomorrow has been CANCELLED due to the adverse weather forecast. We are very sorry for any inconvenience caused. 

Although we have had some nice weather this week, it has been far from predictable! I will begin with the results from the bird ringing demonstration from Sunday. I have attached the final totals below but here are the headlines: In total, 56 birds were caught. This included 29 newly ringed birds and 27 retraps.

According to Simon, our local ringer, several of the great tits that were caught had not been seen here for…

Just a quick blog to pass on some exciting news - work has started on our new hide!  This will be the first fully enclosed hide here at Lakenheath and thanks to the WREN grant that we received late last year, we're able to develop this facility for our visitors.

Yesterday the pilings went in.  These will support the base and full structure of the hide and the platform leading away from the door.  As you can imagine…

As you are no doubt aware, our Race for Wildlife 2013 took place on Saturday 19 October.  The results have already been published in the blog on Saturday but here is a review of how the day itself went, along with photos of our runners and medal winners.

Being woken up in the small hours of Saturday morning by very heavy rain did nothing to reduce my anxiety as a race organiser but thankfully the rain disappeared for…

Over the course of this summer, we have had several reports and sightings of great white egrets flying over the reserve. We have not seen a settled one here for almost four years. That is until Friday afternoon of course! One appeared on the washland pool in front of the Washland viewpoint at around 4pm. If you are not familiar with this species, here is a photo of one of them that was present in the same area for a while…

Our annual Race for Wildlife event took place this morning and the rain held off, much to everyone's surprise and relief.  Thank you to everyone who came and took part and huge thanks to our volunteers - we couldn't have done it without you!

Special thanks also to Emily Knight from Ely Runners, who manned the registration desk and brought along (and operated) two very clever stop watches to accurately record…

Monday definitely turned out to be a day to expect the unexpected. Things started in earnest when somebody came in reporting a glossy ibis was reported flying west over the visitor centre. We all got very excited about this as this was a first record for the reserve (if you are not sure what one looks like, please click on the link above, its definitely worth it!) Sadly, none of us saw it but I sent regular Monday volunteer…

The weather just wasn't great this weekend. However, by the sounds of it, there was still plenty to see if you were willing to brave the weather. I received this report on Saturday from one of our volunteers:

"Hi David,

Alex and I got back from the Lakes today and decided to pop down reserve to try to see the otter on the washland.

We got there around 4.15 pm and didn't have to wait long as he appeared after…

There was good and bad news on Sunday here. The good news was that bearded tits were showing incredibly well early in the morning:

Image credits: Tim James

The bad news was that by the time the organised "bearded tit bonanza" walk got down the reserve, they were not showing very well at all. Unfortunately, they only heard bearded tits. The moral of the story for me is to organise for the walk to start…

If you’ve been up to the Joist Fen North viewpoint over the past few days you’ll see that we’ve been hard at work there. Last Thursday morning our volunteer work party headed up to the viewpoint armed with two types of brushcutter, rakes and forks aplenty. The reeds between the viewpoint and the water were quickly dropped and Dave then ventured into the pool with the underwater brushcutter. Those with…

The last couple of days have been really rather good here. It certainly seems like October is now in full swing. Ali saw a bittern at the west end of the reserve on Friday and there were a family of five hobbys over New Fen viewpoint. Two kingfishers spent most of the day whizzing around in front of the viewpoint and two common buzzards were also seen over the reedbed.

Yesterday turned out to be full of surprises. I…

One thing I love about this time of year is the beautiful light in the mornings. Although it is very difficult to capture, as photos never do it justice, here are a few pictures of Brandon Fen and the washland from this morning:

Image credits: David White

These stunning views provide a perfect back drop for a lovely morning walk. There was a marsh harrier behaving rather oddly this morning as it hunted over the…

It’s been a strange couple of weeks here at Lakenheath Fen – lots of meetings and training courses, we’ve been passing each other like ships in the night almost!

We have managed to do some practical work though over the past five days. Work continues on the raised plant beds - Dave has again been doing most of the heavy lifting, I found time to pop out to do some drilling and sawing (once all…

Just to give advanced warning that there are upcoming A11 road closures due to complete reconstruction of the Fiveways roundabout, as part of the ongoing A11 duelling work.

Different sections are closed over the next three weekends, which may impact on your journey to and from our reserve.

More information can be found here on the Eastern Daily Press website

It's definitely worth a look at the map to see which sections…

Some of you may know that we hold an annual run and walk around the reserve. Here are some photos of the event last year:

Image credit: Anglia Newspapers

Image credit: Dave Rogers

This years event, entitled the "Race for wildlife", will take place on Saturday 19 October 11am. Three multi-terrain courses take you around the beautiful nature reserve, with distances of two kilometres, five kilometres and 10 kilometres…

Yesterday was a lovely day and there were plenty of "blues" out and about. The bluest of the blue kingfishers were definitely out in force as these great photos show:

Image credits: Les Bunyan

Many thanks to Les for sending these over. The hovering individual was taken at Joist Fen viewpoint and the images of the bird with the fish were taken by the visitor centre pond. One of the individuals was perched…

A task has been repeatedly popping up in my calendar for the past three weeks – ‘change the seasonal interpretation’.   We have interpretation boards around the reserve that tell our visitors what they can hope to see during the different seasons and what to look out for.  01 September is the ‘official’ start of autumn (in my book anyway!) but the weather at the beginning of the month was still rather summery…

Its amazing what can happen in two weeks. The day before I went away, all of the excitement about the discovery of the wasp spider began in earnest. Little did I know how much interest Katherine's discovery would generate. As Ali reported on Wednesday, she has done two radio interviews and a link to the article on the BBC News website can be found here. We are still receiving plenty of calls and e-mails about sightings…

You may have noticed the recent media interest in our wasp spider discovery! Katherine has already done two live radio interviews for BBC Norfolk and BBC Suffolk and we’ve had online articles by Newmarket News and BBC News. Lots of you are now getting in touch with us and telling us about your own encounters with wasp spiders which is great – folk from Cambourne and Salisbury so far today! If you have seen a wasp…

The autumnal feel has been in the air again over the past few days, although I did manage to get slightly sunburnt arms yesterday so the sun is still about! I think we were all working so hard we didn’t notice the rise in temperature, but more on that hard work in next weeks mid-week blog.

The osprey has not been seen for a couple of days, although we’re keeping our eyes peeled still. The birds stealing the…

It’s been a busy few days since David’s last 'recent sightings' blog - he's off on his hols now so apologies for the delayed post! 

Katherine made an exciting discovery during our volunteer work party last Thursday, when she spotted a first for the reserve – a wasp spider!  Many of us attempted to get photos on our phones with little success but luckily Dave had his camera nearby:

Photo…

Although the mornings an evenings are now feeling quite autumnal, we have had plenty of summery, warm weather to enjoy in the last week. Starting where I left off on Sunday, I went for a walk in the afternoon with a colleague and there were butterflies everywhere! As we walked along the riverbank, we kept seeing small tortoiseshells and there were one or two painted ladys on the wing as well. Here is a lovely photo of one…

Recently, we’ve been talking about galls here at Lakenheath.  A gall is an outgrowth of tissue on a plant, induced and controlled by a parasite.  The gall then acts as habitat, food source and protection for the parasite.  Our gall discussion started a couple of weeks ago, while we were pulling ragwort.  Volunteer Phil commented on a strange growth on a nearby thistle and wondered if we knew what it was.

Photo…

I struck lucky this morning. I went for a walk around the reserve and just as I was walking along the north side of East Wood (the first poplar wood) I could hear a very distinctive sound behind me. It kept repeating the sounds: "chew it", "chew it". Although this sound was familiar to me, it seemed completely out of context. It was the call of a spotted redshank, a wader that I would expect to be…