Informal Wildlifing....

Hi again!

I've had a very busy week, my brother, sister in law and nephew have been visiting from Bath so I haven't done a lot of formal wildlife watching but whilst out visiting various places I have come across some lovely things!

We spent the week reliving our childhood by visiting a lot of the places we used to go and sharing them with the newer members of our family! Our first outing was to the beach at Mundesley where we had family holidays when we were very small, not loads of wildlife there other than gulls but I did rescue a grasshopper from the sea! I plucked him out and he leapt onto my shoulder, I walked him up the beach with him still sat there and managed to get some photos of him before setting back in a more appropriate place in some grass.

 

The next day we went to Oxburgh Hall, we twice attemped to look around the Hall, the first time Arthur (my nephew) was getting hungry so we decided to eat before continuing, the second time he was just being a bit grumpy, so I took him outside for a walk around. I have to be honest and say I was quite glad of that because I wasn't very interested in the house at all. They have some lovely gardens there and the sun had come out so we saw some lovely butterflies, dragonflies and bees in a bee hive :)

 

Another place we always used to visit as kids was Holt Country Park, it's still more or less the same as when we went as kids, I was half heartedly looking for adders (I saw one there once when I went with my mum aged about 14, the only one I have ever seen) but we didn't see any, not sure if I was happy about that or not!

 

We did see loads of Silver-washed fritillary butterflies, a first for me, all over the buddleia, and they also have a lovely wildlife garden (I'm not sure how new it is but I've never seen it there before) with beautiful flowers that was full of bees and butterflies!

 

On Tuesday, we shamelessly used my one year old nephew as an excuse for the 5 of us 'bigger' kids to visit the Dinosaur Park! I've helped Matthew out at the BioBlitz there before so I knew there was quite a bit of wildlife around, we didn't see anything hugely exciting (apart from dinosaurs obviously) but loads of nice butterflies on the flowers in the Waterside Garden. We also took Arthur on the deer safari and saw Red Deer and Roe Deer, although they aren't wild it was still lovely to see them so close up!

 

Unfortunately my brother and his family went home on the Wednesday but I still had the rest of the week off so me and my dad took a trip to Strumpshaw Fen, we found a swallowtail caterpillar and the man at reception said the next batch of swallowtail butterflies are starting to emerge too. My dad also spotted an amazing elephant hawk moth caterpillar, that was definitely the highlight of my day! There were so many dragonflies flying around but as usual none of the more impressive ones landed for me but I did get a lovely photo of an emeral damselfly. As I was walking back to the car park there was a little field vole munching on a fallen apple, he was so busy eating he didn't seem to take much notice of me so I was able to get some lovely photos of him! We also saw some Ruff, an unidentified (at the moment) caterpillar, a baby rat, barn owl and found a wing from a red admiral butterfly.

 

Matthew and I have discovered a couple of new places to see wildlife as well and have been lucky enough to get good views of bats, foxes and little owls :)

 

Hopefully we will visit more over the coming weeks and try and get some better photos!

 

Thanks for reading, I will leave you with this panoramic photo of a rainbow :)







Sharing Nature....

I don't like sharing. My dad and I always joke that we don't know what the word means, though to be fair this usually relates to sharing food and not wildlife, because that is the one thing I love sharing!

This weekend I have been lucky enough to share my 'Happy Place' with two of my good friends!

On Saturday night my friend Liz was staying over as the next day we were having a picnic to celebrate my birthday! I convinced her it would be a good idea to have a walk around at Strumpshaw Fen and I think she enjoyed it, if not for the wildlife then for the lovely walk. We walked the whole loop around and saw the Barn Owl roosting in the tree, lots of dragonflies flying around (once again, none of them landed) and the usual egrets, herons etc! We caught a brief glimpse of a kingfisher in Fen Hide which landed on one of the sticks right in front, but we didn't notice at first because we were trying to rescue a small tortoiseshell butterfly from a spiders web! We also got to see Marsh Harriers doing a food pass :)
Once we made it to the boardwalk we were looking for swallowtail caterpillars, we met a very nice chap (although Liz was a bit wary of me talking to strangers at first!) named Mark Ollett who I have never met before but knew of by association and was already following his facebook page! He had not seen any yet and had packed his camera away but decided to stick with us with the theory that 6 eyes were better than 2 and maybe together we would find some! We were lucky, and I managed to find 2 (one of which was very small), Mark found one (a very impressive larger one) and Liz, the wildlife newbie, found one too! Yay us :)

 

The next day, following my birthday picnic, me and my friend Sarah took our trip to Strumpshaw after having to cancel last weekend! It was early evening but still very hot, lots of dragonflies and damselflies around and finally some of them landed for us!

As usual we saw the Barn Owl in the tree, Sarah saw one flying but I was looking the other way photographing a dragonfly! As we carried along in the meadow we came face to face with a Chinese Water Deer! The meadow trail is only half open at the moment to allow the cows to graze so we had to turn back, a saw a kestrel on a gate post, we only saw this because we went and spoke to a couple who were looking across the meadow.

 

 

We headed to Fen Hide, there wasn't much about at first, we saw another (or maybe the same) Barn Owl flying past and a distant Marsh Harrier (they don't seem to be showing well from Fen Hide lately, head to Tower Hide for better views). Sarah had to leave so she left me in the hide and Matthew was on his way to pick me up. During that maybe 15-20minute window where I was with neither of them, an otter swam past and a kingfisher briefly showed himself, better luck next time guys!

Some other things worth mentioning from this weekend is that I have discovered the joys of 'geocaching' it's like a treausre hunt using GPS devices (I used my phone), I've only found 4 so far but I can see it becoming addictive, I don't think I will go out specifically to geocache very often (but I probably will at one time or another) but I think it will be a fun thing to do whilst looking for wildlife, or I might find some wildlife whilst out doing it as it takes you all over the place!

 

I also took a walk along the Riverside Walk in Norwich on Saturday morning, nothing very exciting but saw one of the parent peregrine falcons at the Cathedral delivering food to one of the chicks.

 

 

I will leave you with this photo collage I made of another trip to Strumpshaw Fen a few months ago with my friend Rosey, we were lucky enough to see a Cuckoo, Barn Owl, Marsh Harrier food pass, Norfolk Hawker Dragonfly and heard a Bittern booming!

 

Thanks for reading xx



Kingfishers and Badger Love - A Wildlife Update

Good morning!

I've been woken up very early by the heat and the sound of rain so I thought I might as well get working on a new blog!

Over on facebook/twitter/instagram BBC Springwatch have begun a 100 Days of Nature challenge, which is a photo project to take one nature photo a day from now until Autumn (I think it ends on Halloween). So naturally I have decided to do it, there a lot of things like '100 Happy Days' etc things going around on facebook at the moment that I have considered doing but this one was obviously right up my street so I started without hesistation! You can follow this over on my newly set up facebook page Mrs Parrott's Wildlife Watch :)

Obviously I've paid a few visits to Strumpshaw Fen since my last blog, and have been rewarded with lots of swallowtail caterpillars, now looking at these you'd think they'd be very easy to spot...but they aren't. They are actually incredibly well camouflaged, meaning Matthew and I walked right past a huge one when we went to find them and the only reason we saw any at all is because a nice man and his son pointed them out to us!

 

 

We also had a very brief view of an otter at Fen Hide, he swam from right to left right in front of the sun so very difficult to see and almost impossible to get a photo of, the only one I managed was a distant one of his back and he disappeared under the water again, but also in the photo was Strumpshaw's black swan and some nice lighting so I did rather like the effect if I'm honest!

 

The other thing we found was a beautiful blue butterfly, at first we thought it was a purple hairstreak, but the underside was completely wrong (and its proboscis too, according to someone more in the know over on flickr) We now believe it is a female common blue butterfly that looks a bit tatty!





Not forgetting this rather ferocious looking insect that we found on the bridge into the meadow, I am told (again by someone on facebook in the Norfolk Countryside Photos group) that it is a 'black slip wasp' and that 'stinger' doesn't actually sting, phew!

 

Out in the garden we've had more regular visits from a squirrel! As I probably said before we have seen them around but it would seem this one is becoming a bit braver and I saw him on the fence on Saturday morning and later in the week Matthew saw him nibbling on the spillage from our bird feeders on the grass.

 

I spent a lot of time sitting in the garden on Saturday, waiting for the wildlife to arrive, I didn't have as many visitors as I did previously, and was quite frustrated that none of the butterflies or dragonflies that kept flying over ever landed. At one point there were 5 large white butterflies fluttering together against the clear blue sky, it just looked beautiful but I was so mesmerised by it that I didn't manage a photo! Eventually a peacock butterfly landed in next doors' garden and a speckled wood landed on our connecting fence, and I got some beautiful photos of a dunnock. We also have some blackberries growing! I love blackberries but I think I am going to leave these for the wildlife to enjoy!

 

On Sunday I was due to take a trip to Strumpshaw with a good friend of mine, unfortunately she wasn't very well so we had to cancel, but hopefully we are going to go tomorrow after my birthday picnic so stay tuned for updates on that!

 

Instead of a trip to Strumpshaw, me and my dad went to Gooderstone Water Gardens near King's Lynn, even without the wildlife this is a beautiful place to go, they have a 'Kingfisher Hide' over looking a lake, I've seen the kingfisher there before but this time we were really treated to wonderful views! The first time we went in we saw it zip past and could see it down a channel diving in and out of the water, although there were a lot of branches in the way obscuring the view! We left and had a walk around (and of course some cake!) Dad was looking for a grass snake that he had seen there previously, we *think* we saw one swimming in the water but it was far away and moving fast so we couldn't be sure, however, we can't think what else it could have been. We went back to the hide and the kingfisher came and sat on the branch right in front so I was able to get some lovely photos! I have seen many kingfishers over the last five years (when Matthew and I first got together it was the one thing he wanted to see and we spent a long time looking for them in various places, including Gooderstone back in 2010, when we saw one fly past but not land) and let me tell you I never thought I would be lucky enough to take a photo like this!

As well as the kingfisher and the cake, the river was FULL of fish! I'm not good on fish but I'm told by a man watching them with us that one was a pike, I will do a bit more research and find out what the others might have been!

 

As usual there were loads of beautiful butterflies, dragonflies and damselflies around because there are so many beautiful flowers there for them to enjoy! A really lovely day, spoiled only by my binoculars breaking :(

 

We've also done a bit of badger watching again, on Matthew's birthday (Tuesday) we were treated to views of 2 badgers mating, if you really want to see, he has uploaded a video to flickr. We went again the following evening with 2 of Matthew's colleagues, it was a much longer wait this time but we were treated to a young badger almost running right up to us!

 







I've been trying to make some wildlifey contacts and in Matthew's job he gets to meet lots of like minded people, so earlier in the week he met a guy who also blogs about his wildlife spots and has a shared love of Strumpshaw Fen, he has been kind enough to put a link to my blog on his own so naturally I am returning the favour. His name is David and you can find his blog here.

 

Also over on facebook I have got chatting to Alan Sillett who takes lovely wildlife photos!

 

On flickr I have some wonderful contacts who are always so kind and leave lovely comments on my photos even though by my own admission I am not the best photographer and have very little understanding of all the technical aspects of photography, some of them I have even met in real life without realising, and Matthew has worked with a couple of them as they are RSPB volunteers :) I won't link to them as it would take too long to add them all and I don't want to miss anyone out but if you go to my flickr you will no doubt find them in my contacts and favourites!

 

This is also reflected in real life when I visit nature reserves, there's often the belief that only old men like bird watching, and they are all grumpy and guarded, but this is really not true. Obviously there are a few exceptions, there are some people who look at you and think 'you're so young, you can't possibly know anything about wildlife' and try to prove how much more they know than you (nothing more satisfying than proving them wrong, I can tell you!) but 99% percent of people I have met and chatted to in hides and on reserves have been lovely, sharing stories and wildlife spots! Don't think you need to sit in a hide and be silent, if there is someone there when you arrive, ask what they have seen, they are usually more than happy to point things out to you.

 

I'll leave you with this picture of Matthew photographing a swallowtail caterpillar!

 

 

xx