May 5th Mousehold Heath
Today is International Dawn Chorus Day and Dad and I got up at 4am and went to Mousehold Heath to enjoy this year's chorus. To me, it was a bit subdued, not the best one I've experienced over the years. Normally, I hear drumming woodpeckers, plenty of willow warblers, treecreepers and song thrushes here, but today it was lacking all of these. Just one willow warbler, one or two song thrushes and one woodpecker that refused to drum for us.. What we did hear were wrens, blackbirds, robins, blackcaps and chiffchaffs and, at St James' Hill, we had house sparrows.
May 6th Strumpshaw Fen
Bank holiday Monday and I spent a bit longer at Strumpshaw than usual. In the morning, I walked through the woods and pumphouse hearing a firecrest and saw a pair of spotted flycatchers. At Fen Hide, a bittern was booming loudly. During my walk, I also heard meadow pipits singing their display song and a distant cuckoo.
From Reception Hide, I had a crane fly by, swallows, hobbies, marsh harriers, great crested grebes and a lot of greylags. I then visited the dell looking for plants, spooking a hare and a frog. I found many new plants including wild strawberries in the courtyard area.
After my shift, I walked to Tower Hide and the Lackford Run. I found some lizards, marsh marigold and at the hide, a great white egret. The Lackford Run was a muddy waste of time. Also saw hairy dragonflies, large red and variable damselflies, holly blues, peacocks, orange-tips, brimstones and some solitary wasp with white antenna and a white spot at the tip of the abdomen.
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| Spotted Flycatcher, Meadow Pipit, Wasp Beetle & Unknown Wasp (May 6th), Sedge Warbler & Avocet (May 11th) |
May 11th Cley
Went to Cley with Mum. Not a memorable visit. Had a good view of a sedge warbler and a whitethroat near the car park, avocets, redshanks and shelducks, swallows and sand martins on the reserve, sandwich and little terns out on the sea and spoonbills flying over East Bank. Couldn't find the glossy ibis in the centre of the reserve. Needed a scope to see it, I bet.
May 13th Strumpshaw Fen
A really hot day that felt like July than May, perfect weather for the swallowtails to emerge. At least that was what I was hoping for. However, the first swallowtail wasn't seen until after my shift today. What a shame!
This morning, a cuckoo was calling by the river somewhere and a bittern was booming near Fen Hide. Foxgloves are beginning to bloom and banded demoiselles were out beside the river looking beautiful as ever. I also had a common tern over the river and a hare on the fields on the way to the reserve. From Reception, there was plenty of marsh harrier action, hairy dragonflies, a kestrel, swallows, a pair of great crested grebes, greylags, Canada geese, coots, gadwall, a shoveler and mallards.
May 20th The Great Orme
I'm on holiday in Wales! My parents and I have travelled to Stoke on the 19th and popped by some football stadiums of Stoke City and Port Vale. Today, we left Stoke and drove into Wales, visited Wrexham's stadium and then made our way to Llandudno to go up the Great Orme via tram. We got to the top of this coastal mountain-like rock formation and had great views of the town below and found some interesting plants, but not much else. I did hear some rock pipits though.
May 21st South Stack & Newborough
A glorious day and we travelled to Anglesey. After a stop at Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch (the longest place name in the world), we visited RSPB South Stack. It was very busy but we eventually found a parking spot. I got out of the car and heard a chough. I looked down the cliffside and saw it flying to a distant field.
We walked down to the observatory and got a good view of the seabird colony below. Guillemots, razorbills, kittiewakes and fulmars created a lot of noise from a crowded cliff. Thousands more were out on the sea, including at least two puffins. On towards the South Stack lighthouse, we had 3-5 more puffins on the clifftop by their burrows.
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| Guillemots, Razorbill, South Stack Ragwort, Chough, Puffins (May 21st) |
While at the observatory, I had another chough beneath the observatory wall, a much closer view. I also had a rock pipit, a wheatear and a few South Stack ragwort, an endemic species of ragwort found here and nowhere else in the world.
Moving on from South Stack, we travelled back south to Newborough, where I was hoping to see a red squirrel in the pine forest by the coast. However, apart from the coastal view of the beach, sea and mountains, the best we got was a wood warbler singing its loud trilling song from the pine trees, though it was impossible to locate for a photo. The song was breathtaking and made up for the lack of red squirrel.
May 22nd Conwy
A horrible day! The weather has changed to a continuous downpour that was to last for two days straight. It ruined our plans of exploring the moors of Wales to look for black grouse and other things. Instead, we went to check out an RSPB reserve near Conwy. It had several hides, pools, reedbeds and a wooded area and there were views of Conwy castle. We didn't get time to explore all of the reserve, plus the weather being awful didn't help matters, but it seemed like a decent reserve.
What we saw was nothing out of the ordinary, but we did see curlews, little and great crested grebes, oystercatchers, swallows and house martins, the odd gadwall, shelduck and families of moorhens, Canada geese and mallard. It was a nice place, but I would expect it would be better on a nicer day.
May 27th Strumpshaw Fen
It is another bank holiday. I got a lift in to Strumpshaw and decided to look around the now open meadow trail. What a mistake that was! Especially without wellies! My feet got a soaking and had to walk around in boots and socks for the rest of the morning. I did find some interesting plants though, including quaking grass.
Walking off the meadow trail and along the river, a cuckoo was calling from it's traditional favourite tree on the other side. I stopped at the bench on the platform at the top of Sandy Wall to take off and wring out my socks and dry them a bit, not that it made any difference. There wasn't much time to dry them completely, but I waited barefooted anyway. As I waited, there was a water vole below me. I could see movement in the reeds before it finally swam in front of me. As I walked back to Reception, I found a lime hawkmoth and lizards along the Sandy Wall, heard a bittern booming and a twayblade was in flower at the spot we protected.
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| Common Twayblade, Norfolk Hawker, Swallowtail & Quaking Grass (May 27th) Marsh Cinquefoil & Bog Bean (June 3rd) |
I was on full alert for swallowtails this morning and managed to eventually find one on the flag irises outside Reception Hide. It seemed to be there for over an hour and made many visitors happy. I got a few photos of it despite it being very mobile and often obscured by reeds.
Other than swallowtails, there were a few other highlights too. A pair of distant cranes flew over the tree line in the horizon, a hobby over the broad, ichneumon wasps, silver-y moths and a Norfolk hawker in the nectar garden and also gadwall, swallows, house martins, swifts, marsh harriers, herons and I heard a garden warbler in the woods.
June 3rd Strumpshaw Fen
I had learned my lesson after last week and I brought my wellies with me this time. I decided to walk the Lackford Run and the wellies came in use as I looked for more plants to draw later. There were plenty of new things including common spotted and southern marsh orchids and, best of all, marsh cinquefoil by the boardwalk. Never seen the latter before. It was such a beautiful crimson red flower with very delicate petals. I also heard a cuckoo and a bittern and I stopped by at the Tower and Fen hides, seeing very little.
At Reception, it wasn't that sunny for swallowtails today, but we had a bearded tit popping in and out of the reeds where the swallowtail was last week. I also heard cranes bugling and a cuckoo showing itself in one tree in particular as well as swallows, house martins, great crested grebes and a very brief otter sighting.
After my shift, I decided to put on my wellies once again and head into the meadow trail. It was mostly grasses than flowers, but I did find one special flower in the form of a bog bean. A truly beautiful plant with a fuzzy set of flowers. It has been a few years since I last seen one here and only one was in bloom. Dragonflies were patrolling the ditches (Norfolk hawkers, hairy dragonflies and 4-spot chasers) and I found a 4-spot chaser trying to exit its exuviae. I also heard spotted flycatchers in the woods.
June 10th Strumpshaw Fen
Walking onto the meadow trail with wellies on, a barn owl welcomed me as it flew over the grassy fields before the rain arrived. A meadow brown butterfly took one last flutter before taking shelter. It became a wet and miserable place after that. After a pointless and soggy walk around the meadow and along the river, I entered Fen Hide. I was actually wetter inside the hide though as the wind blew the rain into my face through the windows.
Reception Hide was a drier place and while the rain poured harder and relentlessly, there was something outside that made coming to Strumpshaw today worth while. An otter! It arrived from the far right corner of the broad before making it onto land with a fish. It had a couple of bites before discarding it. After a short swim in front of us before vanishing behind the islands of reeds.
Reed buntings, common terns and a brief flight of a kingfisher entertained us in the rain after that. And then a heron showed up and was interested in the discarded fish. The heron picked it up, revealing it was the head of a pike. But then something made the heron spooked and jump to a nearby stump. The otter had returned! It came back to the fish but showed no interest in eating it before swimming around the broad again, testing the patience of a grumpy swan along the way.
The otter then disappeared and so did the rain. The weather improved by the time I left for my train home. Typical! Still a good day all the same.
June 17th Strumpshaw Fen
A very traumatic day! It started fine as I walked through the wet Lackford Run after a weekend of rain, I saw a cuckoo, Norfolk hawkers, sedge warblers and at Tower Hide, I heard a bittern and saw a common tern. And at Reception Hide, I had several swallowtail sightings, swallows, house martins, a heron and a great crested grebe.
However, between my time at the two hides, I explored the meadow trail with wellies on. I was looking for plants. I crossed the bridge and followed a D-shaped mowed path around a gate by the ditch. I thought I'd cut through the D to backtrack and head back to do my shift at Reception. That was a bad idea. It was a boggier section than I expected and my left boot sank and got stuck in the mud! Then my right boot did the same!
I tried to wiggle out, but my foot flew out of my left boot and into the mud and it sank up to my knee! My right foot did the same but I fell and landed on my right knee. I was kneeling with my right leg and my left leg was submerged deep in mud. All the while I was stuck, I was trying to contact the office and my mum with my phone and yelling for help as loud as I could but with no reply or response. I managed to crawl out towards the gate where the ground was more stable to stand up. I also managed to get my right boot out, but the other was well and truly stuck.
Eventually, a couple walking from the pumphouse heard me, but was approaching me casually, not rushing, just walking and looking at things along the way. They thought I found something rare!! The man had a pole and got me out. Then he crazily went to get my stuck boot and after a few tugs, he managed to rescue it without getting stuck himself! He really didn't need to do that! After about 15-20 minutes out there stuck in the mud, I was very wet, muddy and was in a state of panic. Thankfully, I had a pair of shorts to replace my trousers and my walking boots to replace my wellies, but no socks. I had no choice but to go barefoot inside my walking boots. Mum called back and after my shift came to pick me up and give me a change of socks and shoes. So all well that ends well!
June 24th Strumpshaw Fen
A really hot day, a very pleasant one. I walked through the woods and through the meadow trail (without any problem this time). Between that though, I sat at the toe-dipping platform near the pumphouse and had a grasshopper warbler reeling away in the tall grass behind it. I managed to get a few glimpses of the bird, but no photos.
At Reception Hide; swallowtails made brief flybys, bearded tits were constantly moving about in the reeds in front of the hide and a kingfisher made a brief appearance. However, it were the dragonflies that entertained me the most as I had many species across the broad including Norfolk hawkers, scarce chasers, 4-spot chasers, emperor dragonflies and black-tailed skimmers.
Once my shift was over, I was dropped off at Brundall station to catch my train home. However, a train arrived earlier than scheduled to the platform. It wouldn't let me on at first, but eventually the driver opened the doors and let me in. Apparently, this was not the scheduled train and had stopped because there was a problem with the points or something further up the line near Norwich and we had to wait for a while. We then had to move to the next platform at Brundall Gardens as the next train was arriving behind us. After being stuck in the mud a week ago, I was now stuck on a train! Some time passed and we weren't going anywhere.
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| Four-Spot Chaser leaving exuviae & Bearded Tit (June 3rd), Otter (June 10th), Scarce Chaser (June 24th) Marsh Harriers & Swallow (June 29th) |
Eventually the driver told us that the train was now cancelled and was to head back to Lowestoft. Some passengers didn't want to do that and wanted to get off. I joined them and I found myself in an area with a bad signal, but somehow I got hold of Mum and she had to come pick me up. I made my way down to a shop on Cucumber Lane, but she was lost and somehow passed me about three times until she finally found me and took me home.
June 29th Cley
A hot summer's day and Mum took me to Cley. It was a great day for marsh harrier watching as a family of them were showing well as the young had just fledged and were exploring the reserve, getting close to us at times. A herd of cattle were in front of the main hides, so we visited Bishop's Hide and saw bearded tits, avocets, shelducks, oystercatchers, a little ringed plover and mallards with ducklings, which made my mum nervous with the harriers around.
We then went to the East Bank and to the beach, seeing sandwich terns, a distant cattle egret amongst a group of little and 2 great white egrets, a ringed plover on the shingles and plenty of flowers including yellow horned poppy, yellow stonecrop and ragworts. Also seen today was a spoonbill that we could see feeding at a pool as we had a scone and a Danish pastry from the visitor centre.
