Cold air still hangs over us, but the suns warmth is clearly strengthening, the temperatures are predicted to rise soon.
This week has seen the last of our expected migrants return, namely garden warbler. We now have the full set on our sightings board, even if a hobby just put in a brief flyover appearance on Saturday. There is at least one cuckoo singing along the riverbank, while common terns have become a more frequent sight over the broads. In the air we now have swifts joining the groups of swallows and martins hawking whatever insects they can find. A rent a warden guided walk on Wednesday got the full set of fen warblers with reed, sedge, grasshopper, blackcap, garden, Cetti’s, whitethroat, lesser whitethroat, chiffchaff and willow warbler, all of which were singing well and mostly showing too!
Resident species are also showing well; the marsh harriers are now more settled and can be seen building nests and passing food in mid air. The male bittern continues to boom, although we have not yet confirmed if there is another weaker bird in the Fen Hide area, please let us know if you hear two at the same time.
At Buckenham four garganey have been seen along with good numbers of lapwing, a handful of redshank snipe and avocet. A small number of yellow wagtails have been seen on the marshes as well as migrant whinchat, wheatear greenshank and whimbrel.
Insects have been struggling this week due to the cold weather, but peacock and brimstone butterflies have both been recorded; we would usually expect a far better list at this time of the year.
The first large red damselflies were seen emerging last week, but not seen at all this week.
Stoat, Chinese water deer and water vole were all seen around the fen.
Path conditions are rapidly improving and are largely passable without wellingtons to Tower Hide, the Lackford Run remains muddy due to recent minor flooding and rainfall. All paths are open, meadow trail is due to open in late May depending on ground conditions.
Given the cold conditions I expect that there will be an explosion of life when the weather warms up. The butterflies and dragonflies should certainly be evident when the temperatures rise and the song birds will turn the volume up to 11!