Another year goes by and more lessons learned, identifications made, new experiences and of course a couple of dips!
The majority of the focus of the year was on the Patchwork Challenge competition, which I managed to score a massive 160 species of bird at Strumpshaw, Buckenham and Cantley. this beats by previous best year by 11 species!
New species I've not seen at Mid Yare before are as follows;
Grey Plover
Knot
Nightingale
Turnstone
Montys Harrier
Spoonbill
Hawfinch
Sanderling
Sandwich Tern
Wryneck
Woodlark
The Wryneck stands out as being the most surprising of the additional species closely followed by Sandwich Tern and Woodlark. Nice to finally catch up with Hawfinch over the reserve too.
Off Patch I had a single addition to my UK list, but a bit of a belter -The Pacific Swift on my first fathers day
Biggest annoyance of the year has to be (yet again) Icterine warbler. It was a good year for them and I managed to see one fly over my head and away at Cley and another for a millisecond in the open after a 4hr search turning up seconds after it was showing well at Gun Hill. Maybe this year!!
So not to dwell on the past I'll look to 2014.
It may be a busy year for several reasons;
1- January I will be doing the footit competition. I have set the large target of 80 species within a mile of my house....we'll see, but it'll be fun to explore the species around me in fuller detail.
2- Patchwork challenge- all year (but I will probably be there less than last year)
3- Garden pan species listing- all year. This is potentially an interesting and time consuming goal for the year. I will be concentrating on true bugs, hoverflies, moths and all other creepy crawlies that can be identified. This is a way of forcing me to look at more taxa to increase my knowledge and my chances of becoming a better ecologist! I have set a target of 500 species for the year in my small garden, if I'm honest I really don't know how realistic this is but with a potential of 200 sp of moth I think its a fair aim.
4- The biggest thing I will be busy with will most probably be family! with little Toby now 1 and just starting walking, this will be a year for being a dad and a husband. (This also works well with my garden all taxa challenge!! lol)
I wish all readers of this blog a Happy New Year and a prosperous wildlife filled 2014 thank you for reading- Ben
Wednesday, 1 January 2014
Friday, 6 December 2013
Mid Yare Floods
As expected the tidal surge has made its way up the Yare and has impacted on the reserves alongside it.
This morning (08.00) I was pleasantly surprised to see the depth gauge from reception was reading 6.5 (should be about 3.5 in Dec) I was fearing worse! a walk down sandy wall was interesting as it was clear that water was coming in over the river at quite a rate, the river itself was in full flow back towards Yarmouth and the jetty completely underwater, this was 'low tide'.
I then walked to Buckenham where the water was around the top of the bench near the hide, water was seeping through the river bank all along the defence, which I have not seen before.
I returned at 14.00 to find that the depth gauge at reception had disappeared, the pond dipping platform flooded up to the seats, the wet woodland was very flooded, fen hide path had a torrent of water passing over it, the water was about a foot off of the top plank at Sandy Wall and the river was gushing over the fen trail and into the fen. I thought the second tide would be the biggy, now I'm worried about the third tonight!!
I have not had a chance to get to Surlingham today but I imagine church marsh is one big lake at the moment and the path by the duckboards will be a torrent, it may have even breached if there was enough of a flow, we'll see. It will be interesting to see if the new sluice does its job well.
This graph from Environment Agency shows the water level at Brundall/Surlingham, it shows the problem nicely- you can see the water going very low as it was pulled out and then raced up as the surge hit. Check out the low tide dip at 09.00 this morning, it barely registers as a dip at all. The worry now is that there is so much water in the system that tonight's high tide could be even higher....think I'll cancel the work party on Sunday!
Although these scenes are not nearly
as bad as the North Coast, I'm sure it will damage the ecology of the fen as it is saline water, we'll need to get it off quick!
This morning (08.00) I was pleasantly surprised to see the depth gauge from reception was reading 6.5 (should be about 3.5 in Dec) I was fearing worse! a walk down sandy wall was interesting as it was clear that water was coming in over the river at quite a rate, the river itself was in full flow back towards Yarmouth and the jetty completely underwater, this was 'low tide'.
I then walked to Buckenham where the water was around the top of the bench near the hide, water was seeping through the river bank all along the defence, which I have not seen before.
I returned at 14.00 to find that the depth gauge at reception had disappeared, the pond dipping platform flooded up to the seats, the wet woodland was very flooded, fen hide path had a torrent of water passing over it, the water was about a foot off of the top plank at Sandy Wall and the river was gushing over the fen trail and into the fen. I thought the second tide would be the biggy, now I'm worried about the third tonight!!
I have not had a chance to get to Surlingham today but I imagine church marsh is one big lake at the moment and the path by the duckboards will be a torrent, it may have even breached if there was enough of a flow, we'll see. It will be interesting to see if the new sluice does its job well.
This graph from Environment Agency shows the water level at Brundall/Surlingham, it shows the problem nicely- you can see the water going very low as it was pulled out and then raced up as the surge hit. Check out the low tide dip at 09.00 this morning, it barely registers as a dip at all. The worry now is that there is so much water in the system that tonight's high tide could be even higher....think I'll cancel the work party on Sunday!
 |
Although these scenes are not nearly
as bad as the North Coast, I'm sure it will damage the ecology of the fen as it is saline water, we'll need to get it off quick!
 |
| this is not too bad for a 'normal' flood at the fen |
 |
| Path to Fen hide currently closed |
 | |
| Main path round fen closed, you can't get a sense of the flow of water entering the fen from this shot | , but it was roaring! |
 |
| river still rising |
Monday, 2 December 2013
Foot it 2014
I have just signed up to the footit competition. This is a competition whereby you see how many species you can see from your house by foot. Unlike the patch size of patchwork challenge, the allowence is just 1 mile radius from my house, it also just runs for January.
My target is 80 species, which is do-able but will be pretty tricky. A more realistic target would be 70 sp but where's the fun in that!
My 1 mile radius includes a bit of sub-urban, some overgrown fen/scrub, a river, small wooded areas (alder/willow carr), a couple of arable fields, grazing pasture (and the reedbed alongside Lackford run, although I'll only use this in emergencies!)
Here are the maps, should be fun!
My target is 80 species, which is do-able but will be pretty tricky. A more realistic target would be 70 sp but where's the fun in that!
My 1 mile radius includes a bit of sub-urban, some overgrown fen/scrub, a river, small wooded areas (alder/willow carr), a couple of arable fields, grazing pasture (and the reedbed alongside Lackford run, although I'll only use this in emergencies!)
Here are the maps, should be fun!
Tuesday, 26 November 2013
En route Norfolk tick
On Sunday Lizzie Toby and I went for Sunday lunch at a friends in Sheringham so I thought it would be a missed opportunity if we didnt at least pop into the car park at Holt Country Park...
As we pulled in there was quite a crowd looking for the Parrot Crossbills, they had not been seen for a few hours at that point so i guess the crowd had just built up through the morning. Anyway after 3 mins 3 birds flew into one of the pines giving fairly good views although partially obscured for some of the time, even then it was obvious that they were monster crossbills! (jammy timing!)
One of the less red males decided to do the decent thing and flew to a branch nice and open and fairly close, probably to check out what all the people were doing there. This gave a great opportunity to really look at the bird, it looked amazing through the scope, I also got a few shots for the record.
What was quite interesting was the variety in bill size between the flock, some had really massive bills compared to others, the bird I photographed typically was a small billed bird but even so quite a clear parrot, check out the bull neck and forehead. After a short walk we returned to the car where the flock of 12 were flying back and forth giving the call I so wanted to hear just a little one syllable blip blip rather than a commons gLip gLip 2syllable call...one to remember for the future.
So off we went to Cleyspy to try out some more binoculars and then on to a fantastic roast beef. Great day out!
As we pulled in there was quite a crowd looking for the Parrot Crossbills, they had not been seen for a few hours at that point so i guess the crowd had just built up through the morning. Anyway after 3 mins 3 birds flew into one of the pines giving fairly good views although partially obscured for some of the time, even then it was obvious that they were monster crossbills! (jammy timing!)
One of the less red males decided to do the decent thing and flew to a branch nice and open and fairly close, probably to check out what all the people were doing there. This gave a great opportunity to really look at the bird, it looked amazing through the scope, I also got a few shots for the record.
What was quite interesting was the variety in bill size between the flock, some had really massive bills compared to others, the bird I photographed typically was a small billed bird but even so quite a clear parrot, check out the bull neck and forehead. After a short walk we returned to the car where the flock of 12 were flying back and forth giving the call I so wanted to hear just a little one syllable blip blip rather than a commons gLip gLip 2syllable call...one to remember for the future.
So off we went to Cleyspy to try out some more binoculars and then on to a fantastic roast beef. Great day out!
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