Oct 27th Holkham Hall & Oct 30th Strumpshaw Fen

Oct 27th Holkham Hall

On Sunday, I went on a family outing to Holkham Hall with my parents, my sister-in-law and my 3 year old niece, Ava. We wanted to show her the deer rut. Thankfully, they were rutting this time but it was more noise than actual fighting. I took Ava's hand and we slowly crept closer to them, using the trees as cover. I taught her to be quiet as we approached them, only communicating in whispers. After a couple of minutes, she had had enough and wanted to get back to her mum, so I was left surrounded by fallow deer alone. During her short interaction with the deer, she seemed pretty fixated on them in short bursts. At least she seemed like she was interested. I reckon we'll make a naturalist out of her yet!

Oct 30th  Strumpshaw Fen

Kingfisher

The clocks have now changed back an hour and the Reception Hide's opening time has also changed from 9:30am to 10am. This meant I had plenty more free time to birdwatch before my shift at the hide began. Not that there was much about, however, as the reserve felt rather quiet this morning. I saw glimpses of pink-footed geese and a great spotted woodpecker, and at Fen Hide, bearded tits, a kingfisher, a Chinese water deer and many pheasants. While at Reception Hide, I sat and watched mallards and a pair of gadwall go about their day lazily sleeping or feeding while marsh harriers and buzzards soar above them with a little grebe making a late appearance during my final hour. It was not the most exciting of days, but at least we had plenty of people visiting (but no where near as busy as last week) and we made quite a sale with the RSPB pin badges. People really go crazy sometimes over these things as they attempt to collect them all. This morning, we managed to sell a total sum of around £45 worth of pin badges!

Blue Tit

Jay