Green year list additions and fish on the path!

This year I am trying a green year list for the first time. I'm not much of a yearlister, but given the lockdowns and staying local I thought I'd see how many species i can see without using fuel/burning carbon. Seeing as I rarely go too far away from the local area it makes sense to keep a green list. Being able to cycle to Buckenham and Cantley has certainly been very much appreciated in the recent lockdowns, adding a lot of species I dont see at home or Strumpshaw Fen. Yesterday while opening the sluices at the fen (large flood!) I managed to catch up with a number of migrants for my greenlist- Garganey (at least 6), Sedge Warbler, Willow Warbler, house and Sand Martins too. This brings me up to 110 species, which is not bad considering I still have a few easy ones to add. The fen has suffered after the strong Northerly winds have produced classic conditions for a North Sea surge tide. This is not great timing for all the marhs harriers who have been busy nest building or for the bitterns that have been booming well recently. Bitterns like a nice stable water level at this time of the year so that they can be happy that their nests wont flood out, so hopefully I can get the water levels down and bittern bums can go down. It is quite a shame that we flooded so badly as the path was just about getting into a decent condition after the worst winter for flooding in recent years made it pretty much impassable for Jan-Mar. While opening the sluices I managed to see Pike, Rudd, Roach and Gudgeon all happily swimming along the path as well as several pairs of mallard riding the path torrent!

Its been a while, but its time to get the blog back up and running!

After a break since October 2018 I have decided to have a go at blogging once again. Its been a pretty awful year for many reasons, but I would like to focus on the positives so will spare the summary and just start from now. As before I will try to focus on the wildlife I see while out and about, mostly in the Yare Valley. One difference is that my camera is now gone, so its just phone shots for the forseable future. Yesterday I was on duty at Strumpshaw and despite the nice sunny day there were surprisingly few people about so I had time to look at the nectar garden, apart from seeing a large ammount of ground elder which has not been presnt before, I saw two shieldbugs. The shieldbugs turned out to be pied (a fairly common species associated woth white dead nettle) and also a bordered shieldbug, this tiny shieldbug measures just 3.5mm and is associated with bedstraws. Both of these shieldbugs are new to me and also proved to be the first records of each species for the reserve too. Just after I saw these I also managed to see my second Strumpshaw Fen orange underwing moth of the year. With lots of migrant birds now arriving I hope that there will be much to write about in the coming weeks and months.