Sep 25th Strumpshaw Fen

It was a strange day at Strumpshaw today. It was suppose to rain this morning, so I decided to get a lift to the reserve. Annoyingly though, it didn't rain, that is until after I arrived. The weather kind of see-sawed from warm, bright sunshine to very heavy deluges throughout the day. Wet Wednesdays have returned with a vengeance!

Clancy's Rustic

Despite the typical British weather, I actually had a good day. Before I went to start my shift, Ben had something to show me at the office. He handed me a pot with a moth inside that was caught in Great Yarmouth the other day by a friend of his. This small brown moth was a Clancy's Rustic, apparently the fifth recording in Norfolk. Heading over to the Reception Hide, I was greeted by a kingfisher sitting on the measuring post. It sat there for a few minutes, so I decided to film it. As soon stopped recording, it flew away. A few minutes later, it returned and at the same time, something else showed up too...

Emerging from the far right corner of the broad and momentarily hiding behind the reedy islands as soon as I saw them was not one, not two, but three otters. A mother and two cubs. They swam back and forth around the far side of the broad for about an hour, occasionally disappearing from view from time to time. The cubs followed their mother closely, though they did often stop to play fight with each other whenever they felt like it. With the otters around, the hide was soon packed with visitors who wanted to see them and also trying to shelter from the latest downpour. Eventually, after a final bout of play fighting, the two youngsters left us down the far left channel disappearing through the reeds to chase after their mother, who had probably left them to it some time ago by this point.

Rainbow

The rest of my shift continued with sightings of stonechats, marsh harriers, buzzards, chiffchaffs, 20 or so wigeon, a brief water rail sighting and more fleeting visits of the kingfisher. The only thing that I could not find, despite many attempts of searching, was the jack snipe that continued to evade me. Once my shift was over, I made my way through the soggy detour route of the meadow trail to get to Fen Hide to meet up my friend David who had decided to visit today. It was starting to rain again just before I reached the end of the meadow trail and entered the hide slightly wet. Not long after entering the hide, the sun came out and a colourful rainbow appeared.

Trying to make the most of the sunny spell, David and I went for a walk to Tower Hide. I was hoping that we'd see the ruddy shelduck that had been reported there yesterday. Along the way, we saw plenty of dragonflies as well as a willow emerald damselfly. From the Tower Hide, there were possibly a hundred or so teal with a few wigeon and other duck out on the water and a water rail (I had now had seen one from each of the three hides). There was no sign of the ruddy shelduck (which is most likely an escapee) and I couldn't spot the garganey that had been seen this week too. Then, the weather changed yet again and rain hammered the hide and the reserve for quite some time. We were soaked on the way back, stopping at Fen Hide along the way, in which we saw a snipe. Our afternoon walk turned out to be a bit of a washout. Just another Wet Wednesday at Strumpshaw Fen!