#30DaysWild - Days 13-17

RSPB Norwich Local Group Meeting

The first Monday of every month is when our local group meets for an indoor talk. This month's talk was by Mark Thomas from the RSPB, he is part of their investigations team for wildlife crime. He told us of some shocking stories with appalling outcomes. I genuinely thought that harsher punishments would be handed out to wildlife criminals rather than what many would see as trivial fines or prison sentences of only a few months. Especially when, as per one of the examples he used, an entire population of nightjars and nightingales were wiped out at a county level due to successive egg collecting across several breeding seasons. Certainly food for thought which left me feeling quite angry about the whole situation. The key thing is, if you see a wildlife crime taking place, whatever it may be, always note down the vehicle number plate to report to the RSPB or the police.

Moroccan mint

After moving house, I decided I would try something different with my hanging baskets this spring. I wanted to make two hanging herb baskets. In each, I planted a Moroccan mint in the centre, surrounded by a dwarf lavender, a creeping rosemary, variegated oregano and lemon thyme. All had the 'perfect for pollinators' logo and smelled delicious - a treat for the pollinators as well as us. Never having grown herbs in containers before, I didn't realise quite how prolific the mint plant would become... It has started to (somehow) escape the bottom of the hanging basket and was greatly over shadowing the lavender and rosemary. I decided to prune it, but rather than waste so much mint, I looked up ways of storing it - freezing roughly chopped mint cubes in ice cubes seems to be the convention, and it appears to work rather well. It certainly went down nicely in a glass of Pimms... 

Moroccan mint leaves

Lemon thyme flowers

An evening walk

Today was slightly less wet than we've become used to. When I arrived home from work, I attempted to rearrange our bird feeders to make them less of an easy target for the wood pigeon and to encourage our small birds to come back. All have disappeared over the last week, except our reliable and loud male chaffinch. We also took a walk through the park and got caught in a short downpour - the delicious feel and small of cool summer rain. Throughout it all, the birds kept singing. We heard the songs of blackbirds, robins and chaffinches as well as the monotonous cooing of a stock dove well hidden amongst the branches.

Honeysuckle and bird song

I always try to take advantage of the fact we now have a garden, even if only a small one. Before I went to work, I took five minutes to stand in the morning sunshine, close my eyes and listen. There were birds everywhere around me: chiff chaff calling from the park; a chaffinch or maybe two, trilling seemingly at varying distances; a small charm of goldfinches flying overhead; a pair of house martins chattering to each other above, alongside a few silent swifts gravely soaring side by side; jackdaws accusing 'Jack' as they flew.

The English honeysuckle is opening up and living up to its name of 'Heaven Scent'.

Oxeyes

As a last ditch attempt at growing some wildflowers from seed, I scattered a great number of oxeye daisy seeds in a tray. It seems they have all germinated and are doing rather well. I started pricking out seedlings this evening, 30 of them, but there are many more to go!

#30DaysWild - Days 11&12 - RSPB Minsmere and allotmenting

Well, it's certainly been a wild weekend. The photos I managed to take at Minsmere don't do justice to the phenomenal amount of wildlife we actually saw...

We arrived at RSPB Minsmere in early afternoon, so headed straight to the Discovery Centre for the picnic area. It was far quieter than we imagined for a weekend during #Springwatch, and genuinely debated eating our lunch on the play area, in the mock-up sand martin bank... but as a group of teachers, we decided to be sensible and use the picnic table instead. As we sat next to the swaying oak trees, we were joined by a single robin and a bushy tailed squirrel, and we sweltered in the warm humidity of the surrounding air. A female black cap made her presence known at the top of a small tree.

Walking through the cool woodland, we were surprised to find great tits nesting in a number of the brightly coloured bird boxes directly next to the visitor trails. We could hear them calling to the parent birds for food as we passed, but did not linger to avoid disturbing them. My attention was also caught by the calls of a great spotted woodpecker. We looked up to be greeted by the face of a woodpecker chick poking out of its tree stump home. Soon, the adult visited to feed its young and the chick retreated back in, with only a shadow of its bill visible.


We headed to bittern hide. It was packed and we had to stand, but that did not spoil the beautiful landscape sprawling in front of us. A huge marsh harrier made a close pass to the hide, a beautiful and majestic bird, it's dark 'fingers' clearly visible at the end of its wings. Bursts of the babble of Cetti's warbler surrounded us, but there seemed little to see in the afternoon heat. A water rail made a run for it across a small open inlet, its long legs carrying it quickly across. A hobby graced the sky, flying directly towards the hide, before scything off to one side and disappearing over the trees. Then, a bird which I always try and fail to see at Minsmere appeared. A bittern flew out from almost directly underneath the hide and landed in the reeds a few metres away. The sun caught its wings beautifully, each feather showing in exquisite detail. Almost as suddenly as it appeared, it vanished again, leaving me wondering if we'd all just imagined this other-worldly encounter. However, it began booming and eventually showed movement, reeds flattening in its wake and an almost imperceptible bill and head, with those dark bars near the eyes, moved up and remained vertical for some time, before it slunk further into the reeds and disappeared.

On our way to the next hide, we noticed cameras set up on a number of stickleback nests. Maybe this will be another 'Spineless Si' on Springwatch?

Looking over the side of the boardwalk, which was flanked with early marsh orchids, we noticed a small, long-tailed, auburn coloured bird flitting back and forth - there were bearded tits!!! None were close or still enough to photograph, but watching them through binoculars was treat enough for me today, with their blue heads and ridiculous moustaches, they were impressively agile flyers and disappearing artists. As soon as they landed, they were gone from sight.

In the hide, we watched a pair of reed warblers either squabbling or courting, it was hard to tell, right next to the windows. An otter made an appearance, bobbing along at the very back of the water body. Marsh harriers graced the sky here too, gliding across the fenland.

Walking back, we tried the adder trail, but rather than adders, it was full of rabbits and dragonflies (mainly four-spotted chasers), as well as a young scurry of squirrels. I have to love the common British wildlife as much as the rare!

Wildlife at the allotment is my focus of today. I have to admit that I haven't visited in a while, but I was pleased by the wildlife we saw in the brief spell we had whilst the sun was still shining. Digging over a patch of soil, I came across ladybird larvae, which I tried my best to save. Poppies which had self seeded over some of ours and the surrounding patches were humming with bees and the larkspur I diligently tried to raise indoors last year were thriving in the great outdoors. A robin joined us to hoover up grubs we were unearthing and a blackbird was chinking from nearby trees. Swifts screamed overhead and gradually got lower and lower with the changing air pressure, until the heavens opened and we got a proper basking (drenched in a heavy rain shower).