Now we are well into Spring, it is a joy to be on the reserve, especially on warm sunny days like today. It’s a bit breezy but that hasn’t stopped the chiffchaffs from singing- there is one near the Visitor Centre (by the bug hotel) and it’s difficult to go for even a short walk without hearing one now! We have had a few sand martins spotted in flight over the Washland too, and the migrant garganey
…Hello and welcome to the latest blog. We are certainly noticing the longer evenings and the extra heat in the sun (when it isn't windy or cloudy!) and so is the wildlife. On 15 February we recorded our first butterfly of 2023- a peacock in flight near the Washland Viewpoint. We've had a bit of colder weather since but it won't be long before we record our first brimstone, small tortoiseshell or red admiral flying…
With it being World Wetlands Day today (2nd February) it seems an appropriate time to announce to you the addition of new land to the Lakenheath Fen reserve. Thanks to the support of the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation, a charitable trust, and Morgan Sindall Group, a leading UK construction and regeneration group, we’ve been able to purchase 54 hectares of arable farmland adjacent to existing land which the RSPB owns…
Hello and welcome to the latest blog from Lakenheath Fen. This morning (22 January) we arrived to a reserve shrouded in hoar frost and fog that has not yet lifted (12 noon!)- probably because the air is calm and very cold. It was -6c here at 8am and is now at -2c. Everything is covered in frost, and it looks absolutely beautiful- every branch, leaf, tiny plant and fence post is glittering with ice particles. It makes…
Hello to all and welcome to the first blog of 2023. The month of January is named after the Roman god Janus, who was the God of beginnings, endings and transitions. In January we might look back at the year that has passed, and ahead to 2023, and this will be the theme of this blog too. This morning (4 January) I completed the list of bird species recorded on the reserve in 2022- we seem to have had 141, compared to 155…
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…
Welcome to our latest blog. We have a few bits of news to share with you, but I will start with the latest wildlife sightings from the reserve as that's the best bit!
The wildlife at Lakenheath Fen
The past couple of weeks have seen the departure of a few summer visitors to the reserve- such as what is likely to be the last hobby sighting of 2022 (11 October) and possibly the last house martins (13 October). Other…
I thought that given we have seen quite a few changes in recent days on the reserve- all related to autumn- that it was time to write another blog. Strange white domes of various sizes have begun to appear across the reserve trails, especially in shady spots with a build-up of leaf litter. Once they spring up, they grow quickly and the biggest on the reserve (along the entrance track) that we know of is about 40cm wide…
I thought i'd devote this weeks' blog to the amazing array of images kindly shared with us by our visitors. As I write this, we had half a day of rain on 25 August- the first real amount for months- and although we need hundreds of thousands of litres more to fill the reserve, it may have saved us from drying out completely at spots such as New Fen, and was so desperately needed. We hope for more in the coming weeks,…
Hello and welcome to the latest blog. Tomorrow I will talk about our wildlife in a separate blog, but for today my keyboard is devoted to telling readers everything they may want to know about our upcoming Race for Wildlife; what it is like, what to expect, and most importantly- how it helps our wildlife!
Almost every year in early autumn we hold our Race for Wildlife- I say 'almost' because for two years we have had to…
News from the reserve
As I write this blog, I hope we are on the cusp of some rainfall at long last, which is forecasted for early next week (15-16 August). It is badly needed, because the reserve has never been so dry in it's 27-year history. The main pool at New Fen is 46cm below what it was on this day last year, so we really are struggling for water. At the moment, we have enough to keep the fish and invertebrates…
Hello to all and welcome to the latest blog. As you will well know yourselves (especially thanks to last weeks' heatwave!) we've had some very warm weather in the southern half of the UK and we reached 40c here in the sunshine, as most did! What we sadly didn't see as it cooled off was any rain, which is what we really need- the reserve is incredibly dry. If you visit us soon you will see the Washland has only very little…
Hello to all and welcome to the latest blog. We eagerly await the arrival of our new moth traps on Tuesday, but we just couldn't wait that long so Katherine kindly brought her own trap in last night and we caught a huge variety and number of moths. For those enthusiasts, the list is below:
| Setaceous Hebrew character | 6 |
| Ghost moth | 1 |
| Eyed hawkmoth | 15 |
| Poplar hawkmoth | 11 |
| Lobster | 1 |
| Elephant hawkmoth | 2 |
| Ci… |
Hello and welcome to the latest blog from the reserve. As I write this, it is drizzling on-and-off outside and we had 45mm of rain overnight which the reserve really needed, after a dry winter and spring. 1 June was officially the first day of summer, so here's to hoping the season ahead gives us plenty more much-needed rain. This week has been an interesting one- with three scarce species putting in an appearance in…
Wildlife news
Hello and welcome to the latest blog. We have noticed a proliferation in flying insects of all kinds across the reserve recently. Butterflies, dragonflies, mayflies, beetles and hoverflies are everywhere you look especially on warm days. It is getting tricky now to find a St. Mark's fly, which is a very stark contrast to the abundance of them around St. Mark's Day (25 April annually) when they were everywhere…
Hello and welcome to the latest round-up from the team here at Lakenheath Fen- we have been spoilt for sightings lately, especially on the Washland with a wealth of ducks up there, including up to 56 avocet, 2 garganey, 4 shelduck, 3 ruff, 109 black-tailed godwits and a little egret, all on 30 March. Black-tailed godwit numbers have reached as high as 300, and we believe that at least one of them had a coloured leg-ring…
I think we can call this the first blog of Spring 2022, given that we have now had a couple of migrant birds in and a few insects on the wing too. Our first record this year of chiffchaff came on 7 January but since the beginning of March, they have been heard singing and spotted by visitors almost every day, during spells of warm weather. As with blackcap, it is impossible to know if these 'early birds' are genuine migrants…
Hello and welcome to the latest blog from our little piece of Fenland. We have been gifted with some really beautiful days here in February so far- we've had lots of sunshine but some cold starts to those sunny days! And the past couple of days have seen plenty of wind, which the marsh harriers love- at least eight were in the air across the reserve yesterday when Dave, Luke and myself went out on a drive through…
Wildlife Sightings
Hello and welcome to the latest blog from RSPB Lakenheath Fen. The first month of the year has produced some fantastic sightings and in total our bird list for 2022 now sits at 78 species, thanks most recently to a red kite yesterday (27 January) and recent highlights of corn bunting, Bewick's swan, barn owl, woodcock and mistle thrush. A wintering chiffchaff singing on 7 January also helped! Below…
Hello and welcome to the first blog of 2022! We have had some very mixed weather- New Years Day was sunny, mild and very pseudo-Spring, but since then each day has got a little colder and today we arrived at work in -4c conditions! However there was a beautiful sparkly frost adorning every surface and there was plenty of activity on the balcony bird feeders as they filled up after a cold night- long-tailed tits joined…
As I write this I can see a great spotted woodpecker using the bird feeders at the Visitor Centre- he is enjoying the suet-filled coconut shells and the peanuts there. He represents a bit of a change in the variety of birds that have been using the feeders recently- now we are at the beginning of winter, reed buntings and marsh tits are making use of the feeders and there is a small flock of around thirty siskin that…
This week on the reserve has seen huge fluctuations in the weather- November started very cold and with a frost on Monday night (1 November) and yet yesterday was a glorious day- still chilly but very sunny and bright and this encouraged out a few hardy butterflies (mainly peacocks) and quite a few common darter dragonflies. Our visitors, including those on our morning guided walk, really enjoyed seeing them as it won…
Wildlife sightings from the past week
Hello and welcome to the latest blog- last time I was writing one of these, we were somewhere between the seasons- we still had hobbies here and plenty of dragonflies, but the days were shortening and the temperatures dropping. In the middle of October, we well and truly have lost our summer migrants now, with the last hobbies seen at the start of the month. Hobbies tend to hang around…
Hello to all and welcome to our latest blog. I was treated (for work reasons) to a lovely long walk down to the furthest reaches of the reserve- Botany Bay- and back on Wednesday so this has certainly helped me to get a handle on what's about and what to include in this week's blog! The reason for my jaunt was to finish off our Signage Audit- a piece of work that involves photographing, measuring, describing and mapping…
