Can you believe it has been 7 years since I started this blog AND that's not all. 2021 marks 10 years since I became a volunteer at Strumpshaw Fen, which is silently celebrating its 45th year anniversary since the RSPB took the site on. To celebrate all of these milestones, over the past few months I have been working on a drawing project. Below is a 2 page drawing I have framed as a present to the reserve. In it includes only some (yes, some) of the many amazing wildlife encounters I have had at Strumpshaw over the past 10 years. Many of these species you can be sure to find yourself if you search hard enough or know where to look, while others were just chance encounters that are unlikely to occur again.
Once the harrier survey season was over, I helped out with one bittern survey, which was actually very productive as we recorded the movements of at least 2-3 individuals. Stepping out from Tower Hide on that occasion left with a moment I will never forget. Walking back from the hide, I came across 2 men standing on a bench with a woman standing nearby trying to look over some reeds. I asked what they were doing and the reply was "Otters!" That led to me joining them on the bench and there I saw not just my first ever otter, but my first otter with a cub!
When the harrier and bittern surveys ended, I was back without a thing to do and I really wanted to continue helping out at the reserve. So, I was asked if I wanted to help out at Reception Hide and I've been there every Wednesday ever since. During these 10 years, I have gotten to know the kingfishers, the Chinese water deer, the bearded tits and pretty much everything you see in the drawing. In 2016, during the reserve's 40th anniversary, a tick sheet challenge was released in which you have 40 species to find before that year was done. This challenge gave me the chance to find and appreciate things like garganey, hares, barn owls, common lizards, scarlet elfcap fungus, shaggy inkcaps, water scorpions, hobbies, cuckoos, milk parsley, water rails, southern marsh orchids, Norfolk hawker dragonflies and, the most elusive of them all, the weasel, in which I've only seen 3-4 times within 10 years at Strumpshaw.
If there was one creature in the drawing that puts Strumpshaw on the map is the swallowtail. I get asked about them constantly and every year from late May until mid-July, I meet crowds of people from far and wide, from all over the UK come to Strumpshaw hoping to see one. They are truly spectacular and totally worth the wait when you do see one. 2020 is the only time when I didn't get to see one at the reserve due to the pandemic forcing the site to close during the height of swallowtail season. However, most of these swallowtail seekers only come for the adult butterfly, very few visit for the caterpillars, which are just as good as the butterfly itself.
Of course, the longer you volunteer for and the more often you visit, more often than not something unusual turns up. During one of my harrier surveys in April 2011, a male ferruginous duck paid us a visit, snoozing in front of Fen Hide. In February 2012, 2 female red-crested pochard spent a morning outside Reception Hide, while in July that same year, a Caspian tern was flying back and forth from Buckenham to Tower Hide, looking as big as a large gull but with a carrot for a bill. August 2013, a wryneck spent a couple of weeks dodging families and keen birders alike along the riverside path leading to the pumphouse. I came face to face with a short-eared owl (which sadly later died) and got a close encounter with a water shrew, both in 2015. A glossy ibis enjoyed a good lengthy spell at Tower Hide in 2016. The most unexpected thing that I've ever seen at the reserve though, was a Harris's Hawk in April 2012, an escapee complete with jessies attached to its legs! For a long time, we once had a black swan who was later named Cobber, but has since sadly disappeared a few years ago.
To round things off a bit: Cranes, red kites, pintails, jack snipe, water pipits, spotted flycatchers, ospreys, grasshopper warblers, Bewick's swans and hen harriers are all occasionally seen visitors to Strumpshaw. Waxwings and little gulls are very scarce visitors (I've only seen them both once at the reserve), while pink-footed geese and bullfinches are things you are more than likely to see in these chilly months. If you are very lucky, hundreds of starlings arrive to roost during the winter evenings, though seeing spindle berries and other vegetation covered in haw-frost is just as special to witness if you wake up early enough in the near freezing conditions that the icy spikes need to form. Water voles used to show well at the pond near the meadow trail entrance, but have rarely shown themselves in recent years. If you do a spot of pond dipping, you may be lucky to catch a newt. Bats have made the reserve's work buildings a place to be their nursery and I've spent some special volunteer events watching them emerge at night. I once encountered a grass snake mating ball in the woods, that is until a photographer disturbed them and they all slithered between my boots! To see a pike or eel, just wait until a heron or cormorant find one and watch an epic battle as the birds struggle to swallow them.
The reserve is also home to some fascinating insects, plants and fungi if you look hard enough. Scarce chasers are a bit special if you know what they look like and Strumpshaw is just one of the few places in the UK in which they call home. The nectar garden by the Reception Hide is a great place to see wasp beetles and jewel wasps, while glow-worms require a nocturnal visit in which I was lucky to find a couple of glowing females and one frisky male one summer night in 2017, though I have seen their larvae along the wooden borders of the Sandy Wall. The clearwing moth was shown to me by Ben, who caught it using a special lure, but you can find them where ever there's flowers.
A walk on the meadow trail should help you find some marsh helleborines and bogbean, while bluebells display well in one corner of the woodland trail and keep an eye out for earthstar fungi. Bee orchids occasionally appear between the toilets and the nectar garden. And finally, great white egrets, willow emerald damselflies and silver-washed fritillary butterflies are fairly much newcomers that only appeared near the time or after the time I began my volunteering journey at this amazing place and hints of only the positives of what a warming planet can bring, while the disappearance of common blue butterflies, the reduced numbers of wintering coot over the latter part of my last 10 years could be taken as a warning. Who knows what my next 10 years will bring.
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