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
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