March 25th Strumpshaw Fen

Goat Willow Catkins

As I arrived at Strumpshaw this morning, a green woodpecker sat on a fence post in a paddock near to the car park. I was about to get my camera out from my bag, when it flew off as I was about to unzip my bag. Typical! The sound of yaffling green woodpeckers was like mocking laughter at me as I took my early morning walk before the Reception Hide opened. In the woods, their cousins the great spotted woodpecker were drumming loudly and I heared bullfinches. There seems to be more chiffchaffs this week as I not only heard them but also saw them. They are constantly on the move amongst the branches at this time of year, making it hard to keep them in shot. At least the goat willow catkins that have started to come out were much easier subjects.

Marsh Harriers skydancing

Fen Hide was full of marsh harrier action. The skydances are still going but the dancefloor (the sky) was pretty crowded of displaying couples as about over four birds at a time circled together. The pairs flew really close to each other with talons touching and barrel rolls being used frequently. There was a bit of tension between the couples as they begin to choose nest locations. I believe I have found a possible nest site and I think it is Lilly's (the white bellied female). I will keep a close eye on them over the next few months. Also about during my early walk were a few bearded tits, buzzards, reed buntings and Cetti's warblers.

Reed Bunting

I arrived back at Reception Hide to find a Chinese water deer looking around cautiously by the front of the hide. It was male and he looked like he was in the wars. His coat was showing signs of battle with other Chinese water deer. As they use their tusks to fight, the scars look nasty, but these seem to be old wounds as he seems to be uneffected by them.


Chinese Water Deer

The sound of Cetti's warblers are heard throughout my shift like a loud outburst that can catch you unaware. They often make me jump whenever they are closeby. Sometimes while I'm out on a walk around the reserve, they get so close to me without me knowing, that they shout right into my ears from a bush or reedbed and make me physically jump in surprise! Another highlight in the spring soundscape are booming bitterns. In the distance, I managed to hear one coming somewhere in the direction of the Tower Hide on the other side of the site. It was only just audible but I could hear about four deep booming notes.

Marsh harriers continued to skydance throughout the morning, but they and the buzzards weren't the only bird of prey around. From the corner of my eye, I noticed a small bird being pursued by a sparrowhawk. The small bird dived into a reedbed between the two channels linking to the broad to my right. The sparrowhawk lunged in talons out, but failed to catch the bird. It then became a target for a mobbing crow which chased it away. The sparrowhawk (a female) made a few more appearences past the hide but nothing as dramatic as that. I also saw a kingfisher making a brief flyby today.

Carrion Crow

Robin

Dunnock

Blackthorn Bush

March 24th Mousehold Heath

Will making notes

I'm at Mousehold Heath to help my friend and warden of the site, Will Stewart with a bird survey. We need to keep note of every bird territory every spring to find out potential nesting areas and to find out which species are claiming these territories. Today, we are surveying one side of the site with a golf course next to it. Will is in charge of the survey's route and jots down the bird species initials and whether it was a call, a song or a sighting by circling or underlining them onto a map as we go. It is my job to help locate where the bird is singing from and what kind of bird and call it is. With our knowledge combined we had a rather full map when we finished.

Our results

A survey like this helps if you know your bird songs and calls. This is where all the practice of learning the songs and calls of common birds over the winter comes in handy. Even still, the variety of songs and calls of great and blue tits causes the most confusion. There are so many ways individual great tits can sing 'teacher teacher' that it sometimes doesn't sound like 'teacher teacher'. I often confuse the more squeaky 'teacher teacher' of a coal tit for a great tit, but thankfully Will can correct me when I do. Blue tits, on the other hand, have many types of calls from 'see seee seeee seeeeeee' to a harsh nasal scolding alarm call and Will is the one who needs my help to decode these sounds. Together, we make a great team.

We heard so much from many great tits, blue tits, robins, long-tailed tits, wrens, chaffinches, a few blackbirds, dunnocks, greenfinches and the odd house sparrow, coal tit, chiffchaff and goldcrest. We even saw a few magpies, jays, carrion crows, a kestrel and some long-tailed tits with nesting material. There was also a rabbit, a squirrel and a few interesting spring plants in bloom. When I got home, I found a small tortoiseshell butterfly resting on a wall of my neighbour's appartment with it's wings closed. A great start to the survey season and hopefully they will get better and better with new additions when more migrant birds start coming in throughout the next few months.

Kestrel

Long-tailed Tit with nesting material

Alexanders

Dog Violets

Small Tortoiseshell

March 23rd Norwich

I took Mum for a walk along the River Wensum in Norwich today. We began our walk at Fye Bridge. Looking down from the bridge, I notice a long tailed bird fly under the arch way. It was one of those grey wagtails I was after last month! I waited on one side of the bridge for it to show up again, while Mum went over to the opposite side to see it was over there. We could hear it calling loudly and it was coming from Mum's side. I found the wagtail sitting on a chain on one side of the river. This was a female and she was busy preening her grey and lemon yellow plumage, giving us a good look at her.

I think she has a nest tucked behind a lighting stand on the man-made river embankment above the chain she was posing on. When I saw her land on the chain, that was where she came from, behind that light. We didn't see her return there, however, so I will need to visit again at some point. We did not see the male either, who has a black bib. As grey wagtails are usually found not too far from water, he must be around somewhere closeby.



Other highlights on our walk includes; Egyptian geese, comma butterflies, daffodils, crocuses, lesser celandine and pigeons. At Cow Tower, the pond adjacent to it was full of frog activity, but not as many as at Mousehold Heath's Vinegar Pond. Not that Mum was happy about this, she isn't fond of frogs.

Egyptian Goose

Daffodils

Blackbird

Comma

Frog

Another Frog

Lesser Celandine

Common Whitlow-grass

Peregrine Watch Point

At the Cathedral Close, a tent was being set up. This was The Hawk and Owl Trust's annual watch point for the peregrines. Every year, hundreds of visitors flock to see them up on the spire. In 2011, a nest platform was installed and since 2012, the peregrines have had massive fledging success each year. Not only does the Hawk & Owl Trust put out a battery of telescopes for the public to view from, they also have a webcam beaming live footage from the nest platform. You can watch them on this website http://upp.hawkandowl.org/norwich-peregrines/norwich-cathedral-peregrine-live-web-cam-2015/. The latest news is that two eggs have been laid (one on Friday and the other on Saturday)!! I will keep you posted if anything happens.

The Peregrine Nest Platform

How To Draw: Frogs and Toads

As you might have read from my post from March 17th, frogs are at their most active as they gather in ponds to spawn. Frogs are also charismatic creatures of our gardens, especially if you have a pond, and are a great subject to draw. Being amphibians, they have moist skins as well as long hindlegs for leaping and large round eyes to help find their insect prey. Their relatives, toads, are larger and warty, but in truth, frogs and toads are the same thing. So, to begin with, I'm going to draw both.



Step One

 As usual, we draw the drawing's skeleton, a circle and an oval. In a frog drawing though, the head is a smaller oval and with a toad, the body is much rounder, so you need to draw a large circle instead. The legs at this stage are lines that are either curved or bent. The hindleg on the frog is an 'N'-shape, while the toad is a 'y'-shape.






Step Two

Next, I worked on the general shape using the circles and ovals as a guidance. I drew around the lines marked for the legs as small sausage shapes and carefully rubbed out those lines I drew round so I could see what I was drawing more clearly. Features such as the eyes, mouth, nostrels and toes were also added.




Step Three

 Step three is to work on the detail in pencil. The pattern on the frog is a mixture of dark blobs and lines and light shading with the throat and chest left plain. For the toad's warty skin, I create small circles all over the body with a few larger ones on it's back and near the back of it's head.


 

Step Four

 I re-draw in pen, but I do each section (head, legs, etc) seperately to make any adjustments as I go along. Brush the pen very lightly to show skin tone on smooth skin and light shadow on the throat. I repeat what I did on Step Three for the toad's warty skin but with a few tiny black splodges.

Step Five

Finally colour in your drawings. I lightly shaded in the frog yellow as a base coat, then green (but not too much green) and then brown over the top. The toad is brown with orange layered on top and I used the pen to highlight the warts on it's back and side a bit more. Of course, each individual frog and toad has a different marking pattern and colour tone, so the choice is yours.

Step One

Frogs use those powerful hindlegs to hop and leap around. To draw a frog in motion, I add a pair of long sausage shapes with shorter sausages on the ends of them at the back of the main oval shape. The foreleg is created the same way but with smaller sausage shapes and is always positioned by the frog's side pointing to its hindlegs when a frog leaps.

Step Two

Next add the detail. A frog has five toes that are webbed together to help it swim through the water with ease, but when drawing, you don't always see them all. The underside of a frog is also pale with fewer markings on it. Just a few things to keep in mind when drawing a frog in various positions than the one shown here.

Step Three

Then draw over in pen and colour in like before. And with that, my leaping frog sketch is complete.

Frog and Frogspawn in pencil

My final sketch for today is of a frog in the water with some frogspawn. This is basically drawing half or part of a frog with a line representing water dividing it. If your drawing the whole of a frog swimming in clear water, when it comes to re-drawing in pen, draw the parts that are underwater as lightly as possible than the parts above water to make it appear faint as the water distorts what's beneath the surface. The frogspawn is a mixture of squibbles and circles.

The finished sketch

When you draw in pen, draw in the circles and add a black dot in the middle. Colour the frogspawn a very light shade of yellow or blue (depending on the light conditions). The frog and water was the same format of yellow, green and brown as before. Note that water isn't always blue as you normally believe. And there you are. I hope you have fun with your frog drawings and until the next How To Draw, goodluck!



March 19th Salthouse Heath, Kelling Quags and Weybourne

Gorse

I'm out with my dad today around North Norfolk. He has two places he wanted to take me to and I have another place in mind for a couple of scarce birds. So the plan is to go to his places first and then after lunch we check out my birds. Our first location was Salthouse Heath. This is a small heathland area with farmland surrounding it. It has potential as a summer visit, but right now there was little about apart from gorse bushes that formed large hedgerows along the roadside. The yellow flowers amongst the thorny branches are starting to produce a pleasent aroma of coconuts and reminded me that it was spring and not winter like today's cold weather is making me believe.

Hedgerow leading to Kelling Quags

After drawing a blank at Salthouse Heath, we move on to Kelling. We parked the car and walked down a path beside the school there and it takes us to Kelling Quags and the beach. The path is bordered with lively hedgerows and a stream along the edge of one side. Goldfinches, goldcrests, blue tits, great tits, long-tailed tits, chaffinches, wrens, robins, chiffchaffs and a song thrush were taunting us with quick teasing glimpses in the hedges and as they went down for a drink from the stream. I think I have seen two pairs of chiffchaffs together in one section of the hedgerow as they battled for territory and a nesting spot. They were very active and seemed to stick to that one area as we made our way to the beach and back.

Goldfinch

Skylark

The hedgerow had gaps revealing ploughed fields behind them. Red-legged partridges, skylarks and meadow pipits were found here. The skylarks in particular, were busy as males hovered high in the sky performing songs that reminds me more and more of warm summer days. Further up the path, a large pool of water appears. Another habitat with another different cast of birds. This time, there were avocets, dunlin, black-tailed godwits, oystercatchers, black-headed gulls, a curlew, a redshank, teal, shoveler, mute swans and an Egyptian goose all feeding by or in the pool's water. There were a lot of waders and waterfowl in this relatively small area. They didn't seem to mind us walking by as the path meanders round the pool and towards the beach.

Avocet

Oystercatcher

Curlew

Stonechats showed us the way to the sea and then back to the pool afterwards. It was like they wanted us to follow them as they waited at the next bush along until we caught up with them again. On the beach, we found an old pillbox and we had a little rest beside it, using it to shelter us from the cold, strong sea breeze. Then, we made our way back for some lunch at our favourite cafe.

Pillbox

Stonechat

After lunch, it was time for my chosen distination. I have heard news that two birds that I have never seen before has taken refuge in a few ploughed fields at Weybourne. Both come from the Arctic Circle and are winter visitors to the UK. We parked the car at a layby near the Weybourne windmill with a ploughed field where an immature Iceland gull is suppose to be for the last month. We looked, but there was no pale brown gull in sight. No sign of rare birds at this field, but the one behind seemed to be more promising as a handful of people with scopes appeared to be looking at something. So we followed a track to the cliff edge and then walked through some rough grass to the birdwatchers next to the edge of the field I had seen from the top of the first field.

Lapland Bunting

Still no sign of the Iceland gull, but the other bird I was after was there! On the field were probably 4-5 Lapland buntings! And what a bird they were! Lapland buntings are brown streaky birds with a white breast marked with black streaks. Some of the individuals here are males and are in the middle of developing a black face, cap and breast and a rusty red patch on their napes, ready for the breeding season out on the tundra in the Arctic. This a stop over visit for them as they make use of the grain or stubble on this field to fuel up. For me, it is my first ever sighting of Lapland bunting and I did try to take some shots to remember them by. Unfortunately, they were a little bit far for my camera to get clear and sharp images so these are my best attempts. I also didn't bring a tripod, so Dad held me steady in an embrace, he was my makeshift tripod. Dad likes Lapland buntings now even if he is mixing the two target bird's names up and calling them 'Iceland buntings'. He's a good tripod but not good at bird names.

Male Lapland Buntings