While the cat's away....

Matthew has been away at Gardener's World Live in Birmingham for work since Wednesday, here's what I got up to in his absence...

On Wednesday evening I took a short walk from my house to Wensum Park which is absolutely lovely, I did think I saw a water vole but it was just a rat swimming in the river! The highlight of this excursion was the banded demoiselles. I chased one nearly into someone's garden trying to get a photo before I discovered there were hundreds in the reeds next to the river!

 

There was a sign in the park showing all the wildlife there is supposed to be, including otters, voles and swallowtail butterflies, I feel that is a tad optimistic but I did hear some plops and strange noises I couldn't identify so maybe there are more exciting wildlife sights to see there, a few more visits are definitely in order!

 

On Saturday morning I spent about an hour sitting in my garden with my guinea pigs and a cup of tea, was lovely to watch all the birds; blue tits, great tits, sparrows, a baby robin, blackbirds, starlings, doves, wood pigeons and swifts flying over head!

As well as the birds they was a lovely small magpie moth and a frog. We have created a small pond in our garden using a washing up bowl and were surprised earlier in the year to find 4 frogs in there! We have had damselflies and dragonflies in our garden as well as several butterflies which is brilliant considering we are very close to the city centre!

Later on in the day, me and my friend Emma and her daughter Lila took a walk to Waterloo Park, I had to apologise for her because I got totally distracted by all the tadpoles and tiny frogs in the water there! Just a shame there was litter in the water too! Loads of water boatman were swimming around as well, what funny little creatures they are!

 

I didn't really do much for the rest of the day but at about 11pm I went to feed my guinea pigs before going to bed. We have had a hedgehog in our garden lately but not seen him for a couple of weeks, so I did one quick check to see if he was there and was startled when he ran right past my feet and up to the back of the garden! He was happily munching on some sunflower seeds I had put out for the birds, didn't think hedgehogs would eat those! We are extremely happy to have him in our garden, as I said before our garden is very small and we aren't in the best location for wildlife and with hedgehogs in such decline in the UK we were thrilled when we found him in our garden last Autumn!

 

This bring us onto today (Sunday), being father's day, me and my dad had a day out together! We started by having lunch in The Glasshouse which is very close to Norwich Cathedral and the Riverside Walk so afterwards we had a walk there to see the peregrines, we saw both adults and one chick. There were 2 more around but we didn't see them, sad to report there were four but one was found dead last week :(

 

The Riverside Walk is lovely even without wildlife, we didn't see loads today (damselflies, egyptian geese and goslings/ducklings, whatever they are called as they aren't real geese!) but we have seen water voles and kingfishers there before, as well as hearing reports of otters so we are always hopeful!

 

 

Next comes the highlight of the whole blog.....

We continued on to Strumpshaw Fen, my favourite place in the whole world, there is always something amazing to see and today did not disappoint. As well as the wonderful butterflies, dragonflies, damselflies, marsh harriers etc we saw an OSPREY! It was being attacked by gulls, at first I thought it was a marsh harrier but I saw it was white, so my next thought was a larger gull, just as I was starting to doubt it was, when a guy ahead of us on the path said "It's an osprey!"  I have seen them in the Lake District before and heard reports of them sometimes flying over Norfolk but never thought I'd actually be there at the right time to see one!

 

We saw several other lovely things, including a possibly pregnant common lizard growing a new tail and loads of butterflies (including a swallowtail) and bugs, most of which I can't identify, if you'd like to see more pics visit my flickr photostream at www.flickr.com/photos/31291506@N00

 

Thanks for reading!