Hilgay redshank moves to the coast

Nick Carter, Conservation officer (Fens)

Redshank, photo by Bob Carpenter

Redshank, although regular visitors to the Hilgay WetlandCreation site over the last few years, bred for the first time this year. The three young raised were ringed by Graham Austin, of the BTO, and his team on 26 July. 

One of the young has now turned up, alive, near Admiralty Point, on the Wash, where it was trapped by the Wash Wader Ringing Group on 16 August. That is only 29km, as the redshank flies, but it does give us some information about where Hilgay redshanks go to overwinter and shows that at least one of the young was still alive almost a month after it was ringed.   

This local movement fits the story for British redshanks which mostly stay local for the winter when they are joined by continental birds and many of the larger Icelandic redshanks.

Norfolk’s wildlife in November

Nick Acheson, Norfolk Wildlife Trust
 
Stand outside on a clear night in November and let your mind reach into the doings and beings of the wild world. Overhead in the vastness and blackness of the sky are the sounds of thrushes on the move, birds retreating from the Scandinavian and Siberian cold as winter grips the boreal forests in which they bred. The night flight call of the redwings above you is a fine fizzling lisp, striping through the dark sky like a shooting star. The fieldfares with them have a choppier flight and a choppy call to go with it: a squelchy chuck-chuck like wellies sprung from wet mud. Listen carefully and you may hear the bright tick of a song thrush too, southbound in the night on wings from the forests of the north.

Tawny Owl, photo by Julian Thomas

Nearby, the local tawny owls are shouting their claim to the woods, stating their intention to breed here in late winter and to raise their round-eyed but steel-taloned chicks over the spring and summer. In the male’s gentle fluting and the female’s impetuous double-shriek the message is clear: let no other tawny encroach our patch. Perhaps, if you live close to a common or a vole-tunnelled meadow, you may also hear the breathy, insistent call of a barn owl, like a dropped can of cola being opened just a crack.

If the air is mild the woods’ edge may yet be crisscrossed by a million calls too high for human ears to hear. British bats begin their hibernation now – putting themselves on standby through the harsh, insect-scarce middle winter – but may still be on the wing and feeding in November. The cobweb of sound they cast across the night may only be heard by us with the help of a bat detector, which translates their too-high talk into sound we can hear; each species of bat with a distinctive purr, trill or rattle in the sounds the machine makes.

Bat, photo by Mark Ollett

The other mammals in Norfolk’s night may only roam where their legs will take them and are guided more than any other sense by scent. We primates, with our forward-pointing eyes, dulled noses and half-dulled ears, are designed for the day. (We even say, ‘Oh I see,’ when we mean we understand.) Most mammals though, especially those active at night, navigate the cobweb of meaning spun over woods and fields by smell. Simon Barnes expresses this magnificently in his How to Be a Bad Birdwatcher: ‘If you were to write a novel for a dog, it would have to be written not in sound symbols, like the words you are reading now, but in smell symbols.’

Hedgehog, photo by Peter Mallett

So in your November night, you may hear the garden snuffling of a not-quite-hibernating hedgehog sniffing his prickled way around the world, or his enthusiastic crunching as he crushes a slug in his teeth. Or you may imagine the trail of scent drawing a quick-eyed stoat through the dark in suit of his prey, or delighting the rubbery nose of a stripe-faced badger as he trots peaceably through a paddock hoping to find worms.

As you retreat to your warm bed beneath the eaves and beneath the covers, take with you this wild November night and the creatures which inhabit it. For over your roof the thrushes stroke the starred sky, down the lane the male owl’s muted hoots lay claim to a territory of trees, and in the twitch of a stoat’s nose is life lived and life lost.


Find out more about Norfolk’s wildlife.  Norfolk Wildlife Trust’s Wildlife Information Service is here to answer any questions or identify your species pictures.

Build a bottle bird feeder

A brilliantly simple idea for upcycling empty plastic bottles as bird feeders.

Click here for more tips and advice on looking after wildlife and you can buy your bird seed from our friends at Vine House Farm.

Great progress at Methwold wetland creation site

Nick Carter, Conservation Officer (Fens)

Fen Group has just stopped work for the winter on the Methwold site. The fine weather since they started in mid-August has meant they have made good progress excavating the perimeter ditch and bank, completing 700m in 2 and a half months. Work has to cease over the winter as the excavated banks are likely to erode if not covered in vegetation and temperatures will be too cold to establish a grass cover. It is hoped that Fen Group will start again in the spring as long as the winter is not too wet. Over the winter they will be constructing the water control structures that will be incorporated into the build.

Drilling the embankment

In addition to this work, some trees have had to be removed to enable the construction of the perimeter bank and three outlying badger setts had to be fenced off, under licence. The main sett has been unaffected by the works.

Volunteers from Centrica this week

Further tree removal will be carried out over the winter to allow completion of the perimeter ditch and bank next year. Some tree and hedge planting was carried out by a corporate work party from Centrica – more about this in a future blog –  and eventually a screen of bushes will be planted around the edges of the site to maintain the visual landscape features of this area of the Fens.

Another Wissey Milestone

Nick Carter, Conservation Officer (Fens)

Monday 3 November saw the turning on of the abstraction from the River Wissey into the storage lagoon on the Hilgay Wetland Creation site. 

Water is being abstracted at 150m³/h, 24hours a day, until a level 50cm above sea level is achieved; at the start of abstraction the level was about 15cm below sea level. Once this level is achieved abstraction has to stop and the lagoon banks checked for one month for any leaks or slippages, before the next 50cm of water can be abstracted and the checking process repeated. 

Reservoir abstraction

While the checking is going on, water will be abstracted into the perimeter ditch which will enable the wetting up of the whole site through the network of ditches and water control structures. By the end of the winter abstraction period (end of March) it is hoped that the lagoon will be close to its maximum level of 159cm above sea level. Once this level is reached and the lagoon bank is given the all clear, the lagoon will receive full certification and water can be released to keep the whole site wet. 

Later on next year some of this water will be let onto the neighbouring Methwold site, as long as construction is finished, to start to wet that site up too.

End of the season at Weeting Heath

Matt Twydell, Weeting Heath Summer Warden
 
It is now the end of the season here at NWT Weeting Heath and unfortunately the end of my summer contract here, I have enjoyed my time here at Weeting Heath and the season has flown by. The dropping temperatures and leaves are the starting signs of autumn and winter, other signs on the reserve are the appearance of several fungi that have been sprouting up at Weeting. 

This year has been a good year for the main attraction at Weeting Heath, the stone curlew. Five pairs nested on Weeting Heath this year producing five chicks that fledged from in front of the hides which is the highest for several years.

Three of the fledged chicks came from one pair which managed to have two broods this year. This pair consists of an unringed female and a ringed male which we call Upper Right Black, due to the ring combination including a black ring on its upper right leg (original name I know!). The ringing of stone curlews is part of the Stone Curlew Recovery Project and has been going since the 80s, it gives us an insight and important data into where the stone curlews breed, potential survival rates and where they overwinter from year to year.

 
What makes Upper Right Black interesting is that we have been told potentially this bird was first ringed as a chick in 1990! Making this bird the oldest recorded bird in the project at an age of 23! This bird was part of a pair which successfully reared and fledged three chicks this year. Below is a video I took on my phone earlier in the season showing Upper Right Black with two of its chicks and on the right a close up picture of one of his chicks we ringed this year, lets hope his chick will make it to 23 as well and be back at Weeting Heath in 2037!

Stone curlews normally depart at the end of September or start of October to overwinter in southern Spain or northern Africa such as Morocco (something I know I would like to do). There has been one or two records of stone curlews overwintering in this country when whether conditions are mild enough. So potentially if Upper Right Black has been flying to southern Spain for the last 23 years, it means he has flown roughly a staggering 55,000 miles in its life time, which is twice the circumference of the Earth at the equator!

Other interesting wildlife seen this year include two cranes flying over the reserve in June, which means that 95 species of bird were recorded at Weeting Heath this year. A clouded yellow butterfly was also recorded on the reserve which brought the total number of species for this year to 24. Bats were also recorded for the first time this year at Weeting Heath through the free Norfolk Bat Survey, which anyone can take part in. The results showed that at least eight species of bat use the reserve including brown long-eared, noctule and 
Daubenton's.


Spiked speedwell flowered early this year at the end of June rather than July and August due to the warm weather, with over 550 flowering plants counted.

So the season has now ended and the reserve is now all shut until next March, hopefully you will come visit next year where you might get to see old Upper Right Black celebrating his 24th year.

Cheers

Excavation completed at Potter reedbed creation site

Nick Carter, Conservation Officer (Fens)

William Morfoot Ltd has completed the excavation works at Potter in just over five weeks. They have created a number of deep pools connecting to the ditch network to enable fish to move around the site and to act as refuges. The scale of the works can be seen from the aerial photo taken by Morfoot’s drone:

Photo supplied by William Morfoot Ltd

 

Following on behind them, Broadwood has planted over 35,000 reeds, grown by local nurseries British Wild Flower Plants using seed harvested from reeds at Hickling. These reeds have mostly been planted along the edges of the newly created deep pools. This reed/water edge is critical to attract bitterns to the site as it is along these edges that the birds primarily feed.

Over the winter the ditch from NWT Hickling Broad to the site will be enhanced to enable water levels to be raised which will aid the survival and spread of the reeds. A decision will be taken early next year about further reed planting. Then all we have to do is sit back and wait for the bitterns and marsh harriers to arrive!