July at Hickling

Caroline de Carle, Hickling Visitor Centre Coordinator

 

Wow what a proper summer we are having at Hickling and the wildlife, on the whole, is loving it. Needless to say the swallowtail butterflies have been out in profusion with lots of caterpillars as a result. Given the late date of the first adult population flight, however, we are unlikely to see a second lot of adults flying this late summer. But we'll wait and see. It is an interesting year in terms of wildlife adapting to climatic extremes and we could learn a lot on our reserves.

Hickling is literally buzzing with insects, in every shape, colour and size, reptiles, flowering plants and of course, birds. Concerns were voiced early in the year that the terrible early spring had decimated our bearded tit population, but, thankfully lots of healthy youngsters are being seen feeding in the reed beds.

Marsh harrier by Daren Mulley

Another species which seems to have thrived this year is marsh harrier. One of the highlights reported by a visitor to Hickling this month has been the sight of parent harriers feeding two well grown chicks in flight. Male marsh harriers are fabulous food providers when the female is on the nest, and the species is well known for the male to pass food on the wing to the female in a very graceful flight dance. When fledged chicks are learning to hunt, Mum and Dad copy this food pass routine and the little ones, with their long, strong legs, grab food from their parents in flight, so preparing them for adult life.

As we prepare for the summer holidays, it is so exciting to know that every visitor'’s experience is going to be different from the next and our “sightings board” is going to be full every day with new encounters with wildlife.

Find our more about the many species of wildlife we have in Norfolk in NWT's Species Explorer. View stunning images in our online gallery and if you have any wildlife questions that remain unanswered, get in touch!

Mighty Oaks

Tony Leech, NWT Trustee and County Fungus Recorder

Oak at NWT Thursford Wood, photo by Tony Leech

A few weeks ago I hugged a tree. I didn’t fall in love with it, and I don’t think it was too bothered either, but I wanted to measure its girth - which turned out to be about 27 feet. The tree in question (pictured) is an oak in Thursford Wood, roughly half-way between Holt and Fakenham. It is a small wood but an ancient one. Owned by Norfolk Wildlife Trust it is a mere strip adjacent to the A148, so nowhere in the wood is out of sound of traffic. But the trees are very special because some of them have been there for a long time. It is said that oak trees grow for 300 years, rest for 300 years and decline for 300 years. By this reckoning, the one I was measuring is well over 600 years old.

The decline manifests itself in two main ways; first by ‘stag-heading’. When the tree is no longer increasing in size, and is unable even to replace and replenish what it has achieved, it undergoes a controlled reduction. Twigs and small branches die but the thicker branches in the canopy persist as pointed and skeletal antlers. Such trees have been felled by the ignorant under the misapprehension that they are dying; perhaps they are but are likely to take a very long time doing so. In good years (wet ones) new growth will burst out to maintain a green head from which the dead branches project.
 

The second indication of decline is hollowing, the removal of heartwood through the activity of specialised fungi. It used to be thought that this was an indication of disease but it is now appreciated that this removal of dead tissue might even be beneficial as it reduces weight but not strength. In gales, hollow trees are more likely to remain standing when similar-sized solid stems fall.

 

Coppiced oak stool at Holt Hall, Tony Leech

The hugged tree at Thursford, the largest of a number of giants, has been pollarded, that is, cut repeatedly in the past about eight to ten feet from the ground to promote the growth of thinner branches for harvesting. Repeated cutting down to the base (coppicing) produced straighter branches but the new growth would have been more easily eaten by browsing animals. When coppicing has been carried out for centuries and then neglected, a coppice ring may have formed, as in the woods at Holt Hall; all these stems have sprouted from the same stool. Both coppicing and pollarding prolong the active growth phase of a tree.

There are two rather similar species of (assumed) native oak in Britain, The English (or Pedunculate) Oak (as at Thursford) and the Sessile Oak (named because its acorns are sessile, i.e.unstalked). The latter is predominantly a northern and western species in Britain, quite scarce in Norfolk, although distribution is much influenced by planting. A magnificent (and relatively young) Sessile Oak, a tree which is often more slender than the English Oak, can be seen in front of Holt Hall (below). In nature, the two species hybridise to produce trees of intermediate character.

 

Sessile Oak at Holt Hall, photo by Tony Leech

An enormous amount of folklore is associated with oaks; each acorn, for example, possesses its own fairy. The Thursford oak is closely surrounded by a well-worn path. I have visited the tree at night but have always gone cautiously, wary of surprising witches enjoying their pagan rites.

Wildlife Watch - Moth Morning Madness at NWT Hickling Broad

Jessica Riederer, Seasonal Education Officer

Moth identification is not one of my strengths so this past Saturday morning I took the opportunity to sneak into the Moth Morning Watch event held at NWT Hickling Broad. The event was run by Assistant Hickling Warden, Adam Pimble with the assistance of Seasonal Education Officer, Jo Whitaker. 

What a fantastic morning! First of all - a big ‘thumbs up’ to the kids (and the parents) who attended. As educators, we are always happy to be in the company of super keen kids – and all of the children attending contributed to the event in some way. The morning began with a brief, warden led discussion on moths and butterflies – their differences and similarities, as well as some identification challenges; this was not only fun for the kids but also a great way to see what guests want to get out of an event and what their prior knowledge is. It is always inspiring to see a four year old match the correct photographs of caterpillars to a swallowtail and peacock butterfly, and I think we were all pleased to see another child point out the difference between a moth cocoon and a butterfly chrysalis!

The majority of the two hour event was spent going through the four moth traps that had been set in various places at Hickling the previous evening. All participating children were given insect pots to catch (or try to catch) their favourite moths in. This enabled all of us to see individual species more clearly and also for Adam to tell us a little bit about each one.  Going through the moth traps was great fun! Everyone was running around saying, ‘Look at this one!’ or ‘Look at that one!’ Quite a few moths escaped before we had the chance to see them but of course we were careful to handle all of them in a respectful manner and release them once we had ogled over them. 

I never had the chance to see moths this closely. We saw so many different kinds!  In an hour we looked at more than 50 different species. Moth identification books were spread out on the lawn for our use but Adam was a bit of a moth expert and I think there was only one that he was unable to identify. Ok – so my favourites were the big and beautiful elephant, eyed and poplar hawk moths, but I have definitely gained a greater appreciation (and maybe even a bit of love) for the little guys!  

After immersing ourselves in moths for an hour, we had the chance to embark on a warden led walk around the beautiful NWT Hickling Broad. Gatekeeper, meadow brown and swallowtail butterflies fluttered around us as well as numerous kinds of dragonflies such as Norfolk hawkers and broad bodied chasers. We even had the chance to watch a sneaky little water vole!   

Wardens spend their time immersed in the beautiful reserves they care for. They are incredibly knowledgeable on the plants and animals that live there. They are also very busy! I think the opportunity to spend time with an expert in a setting like this really is a special opportunity. Taking part in the event I found myself thinking – I can’t believe these kids are having the chance to do this. The entire morning was very ‘hands on’ and it is exactly these types of activities that make memorable and powerful learning experiences. 

Wildlife Watch is the junior membership of The Wildlife Trusts and the UK’s leading environmental action club for kids. Taking part in Wildlife Watch is an exciting way to explore your surroundings and get closer to the wildlife you share it with.

Our next Watch event takes place on Saturday 17 August, also at NWT Hickling Broad, but this time hunting for bats. I may try to sneak onto this event as well, but I have a feeling there will not be room on the boats! If you are not crazy about bats (even though you should be) join us on September 28th for a Reptile Hunt! There is a small charge for Watch events and booking is essential. Please call NWT head office on 01603 625540.

Look out for the ring bearer

David North, Head of People and Wildlife

Ringlet butterfly, photo by David North

"Three Rings for the Elven-Kings under the sky,
Seven for the dwarf –lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die,
......
One Ring to rule them, One Ring to find them"

JRR Tolkien The Lord of the Rings

A touch of magic is being brought to my local walks by a ring-bearer. This ‘lord of the rings’ is the ringlet butterfly which at this time of year may well be Norfolk’s commonest butterfly. Have you seen a dark chocolate coloured butterfly fluttering over tall grasses? Look anywhere where rough grasses grow tall and flower. Along grassy roadside verges, supping nectar from bramble flowers, dancing along the edges of ripening wheat and barley fields, just now this ring-bearer is not hard to find.

Like many butterflies most of the ringlet’s life is spent as a caterpillar. The caterpillars live for 11 months and most adults probably for just two weeks. So catch them while you can. July is the best month to enjoy this butterfly. Unlike most butterflies, the caterpillars are most active by night. They climb grass stems of cocksfoot, tufted hair-grass, couch and annual meadow grass and feed under moonlight hiding invisible in the base of grass clumps by day. Any chance disturbance by night and the caterpillar simple lets go tumbling to the safety of a hidden grassy world.

Photo by David North

Ringlets, like all good ring-bearers, keep their golden rings well hidden. With wings open this butterfly could even be described as drab, being a plain dark brown above. It’s the undersides of its closed wings that hold its golden rings, each yellow gold ring encircling a black eye with a spot of white at its centre. How many rings? Well this depends on how this shape-shifter holds its wings. My best count was eight rings. The books usually say seven. Though the ringlet often casts a cloak of invisibility over its gold and many times closed wings reveal just five or six rings.

Several other butterflies are ring-bearers. The speckled woods that dance along woodland glades and shady hedges also carry handsome golden-yellow rings – six along the hind edge of the open hind-wings.

So next time you see a ringlet count its rings – seven or eight gold rings for the ringlets in their grassy lands, five rings for the speckled woods that dance in woodland glades and one ring for the... Well some things are best left a mystery!

Enjoy these sunny, summer butterfly days while they last and see if you can beat my count of eight gold rings!

Tales of the Gaywood Goatsucker

Ed Parnell, Norfolk Wildlife Trust

In July dusk is late to make way for darkness, but as night finally begins to arrive a strange sound fills the heath – an almost-mechanical mix of reeling, rattling and croaking. A nocturnal swarm of insects, or a frog chorus perhaps? No, the throaty, churring calls belong to one of the UK’s most enigmatic birds: the nightjar.

Nightjars are a scarce summer visitor, arriving in May and departing for their sub-Saharan wintering grounds from mid-August. In Norfolk, they are found mainly in heathlands and young conifer plantations. Their stronghold is the Brecks, but there are also healthy populations in the heaths of the North Norfolk coast, the Gaywood Valley near King’s Lynn, as well as a few smaller populations scattered around the county.

The clever camouflaged nightjar, photo by Andrew Ramsey

Nightjars are odd-looking birds. Their plumage is an intricate mix of camouflaged browns, perhaps most similar to a tawny owl, but their shape is very different: whereas owls sit upright, nightjars are elongated and horizontal, meaning that during the day, when they often sit lengthways along a branch, or on the ground, they are almost impossible to spot. In flight, they’re an entirely different prospect: long-winged and like a hawk, though with a jerky, flapping action, which brings to mind a giant moth.

Like most nocturnal birds, a wealth of folklore and superstition surrounds the nightjar. Since classical times it was thought (wrongly) that the birds feasted on the milk of goats, leading to one of their alternative names: goatsucker. The naturalist Gilbert White recorded a mistaken belief among the locals of Selborne in Hampshire that nightjars attacked calves and inflicted them with a fatal distemper (actually caused by the egg-laying warble fly). Norfolk too, has a nightjar tradition: the seventeenth century Norwich writer Sir Thomas Browne refers to the species as the “dorhawke or prayer upon beetles”.

One of the best places in Norfolk to see nightjars is RoydonCommon in the Gaywood Valley. Walk onto the heath just before dusk (a full moon on a warm, still day will help) and wait. With luck, the distinctive churring calls will soon begin and you will spot one of these long-winged enigmas flying low over the heath, hunting for insects. The males will often deliver their display calls from an exposed branch but it can be incredibly frustrating to try and pin down their whereabouts as the sounds have a ventriloquial quality, seeming to emanate from all around.

Tree Bumblebees at NWT Thorpe Marshes

Chris Durdin, NWT Thorpe Marshes

Tree bumblebee

 
We’re always hearing about the plight of bees. That tends to affect the farmed countryside more than nature reserves and our gardens, but it’s reminded me that I struggle to identify bumblebees – leaving an obvious gap in recording the wildlife at NWT Thorpe Marshes.

A small step towards plugging that gap came when an email from a regular reserve visitor alerted me to tree bumblebees Bombus hypnorum. The easiest place to see them is feeding on bramble flowers by the railway bridge where you enter the nature reserve, though my photo is on a valerian, a proper marsh flower.

For a bee beginner like me, tree bumblebees are great: easy to identify, no real confusion species and with the added excitement of being a new colonist. They were first recorded in the UK in 2001 and in Norfolk in 2007.

As you can see in the picture, tree bumblebees are ginger with a dark abdomen and a white tail. Males are bigger than workers and queens bigger still, but they all have the same pattern. But I can’t pretend this is special to Thorpe Marshes: this colonial bee species is probably in your garden, too. I came home from the marshes and promptly found them in mine!

A water vole encounter

Jessica Riederer, Seasonal Education Officer

Since I moved to England in 2008 I have been trying to catch a good glimpse of a water vole. I know they are fairly common in Norfolk, that every other person seems to have seen one, and that they can ‘regularly’ be seen in this place or that place – none the less – I have yet to see one. I have heard the familiar ‘plop’ into the water many times and if I stretch my imagination I could probably say that once, at NWT Thorpe Marshes, I saw a streak of dark, wet fur before one disappeared into a dyke, but I certainly have never seen one sitting on its haunches, nibbling on a reed and looking ever so cute as they always seem to be doing in the photographs of the hundreds of people who have not only seen but managed to photograph one.

Water voles aside, for me it was all about dragonflies this weekend. On Saturday I spent three enchanting hours watching an emperor dragonfly on his relentless but elegant patrolling of his lily pad laden pond patch, but on Sunday, I devoted the sweet sticky sunny hours to my favorites – banded damselflies. I live next to the River Tas which hosts a healthy population of them and this morning when they kept visiting my garden, I knew that this would definitely be a good banded damselfly day. 

In shorts and sandals, camera in hand, I strode across the sheep field that borders my house and down to the bridge that crossed the crystal clear waters of the Tas. As suspected, there were more banded’s than I had ever seen. Of course they were not flying anywhere near me - they all seemed to be landing quite low on the foliage just above the water’s surface. Observing and photographing them from the bridge would not work. I needed to get down to the river. This of course would cause considerable pain as there was a good three meter strip of stinging nettles lining it. Fortunately there were no children about as I pushed my bare-legged way through the elbow high nettles enduring considerably more pain than I had envisioned. At the river’s edge I slid down the embankment in a most ungraceful manner and landed thigh deep in water that was much colder than I had hoped. 

Banded damselfly, by Jessica Riederer

Wading through the river I found a nice shallow patch of submerged sandy (and not too silty) gravel to sit on. For an hour I sat, River crowfoot flowering around me, tiny fish darting amongst my toes, and more banded damselflies than I had ever seen, fluttering, chasing, landing, hunting, mating – their dainty iridescent blue and green bodies and the barely audible flap of their wings making me incredibly happy. 

The longer I sat with the river flowing around me, the more life I noticed. The air was thick with insects and I was feeling quite pleased with myself as nothing seemed to be biting me or landing on me although every now and then a banded would land on my camera or my knees that remained poking out of the water. After about an hour, I decided that in actual fact I was cold, and my legs were cramped, and my sandals were not in fact waterproof so perhaps it was time to exit the river.

But then, about 10 feet in front of me, I saw the slightest, graceful movement of something small swimming against the flow of the river, beneath the overhanging vegetation. Leaves were pushed aside and water rippled where it had not rippled before, as a little body made its way closer and closer and - to my absolute disbelieve - out of the water, not three feet from me, emerged a water vole. My heart pounded in my chest and I sat there stupefied. A water vole - not three feet from me! So close! From his bent reed perch, he stared at me, lifted his nose into the air once or twice perhaps trying to detect my presence, but then just carried on doing his water vole thing. I watched in awe as he cleaned his chunky little face and groomed his whiskers with his perfect slender little feet. For once I was not worried about trying to get a photograph – he was far too close for me to focus, but being unable to help myself (and perhaps to assist in my memory) I slowly pointed my camera towards him, leaning back away from him as far as I could, and got one blurry shot. He just continued grooming himself.

The water vole that visited, by Jessica Riederer

After a moment or two, he slid back into the water and I turned to watch him swim up the stream behind me. Not five feet past me I heard – and this time saw – that familiar PLOP as another water vole jumped off the embankment into the water and proceeded to chase my little visitor up and down the overhanging brambles, in and out of the reeds and back and forth under the river behind me – little brown bodies showing ever so clearly though the transparent waters of the Tas. Further upstream another large water vole busied its way towards me on the surface of the water, and after more splashing, all went quiet and it was as if nothing had happened except for the hum of insects and the blissful dainty flight of damselflies. 

Walking home, I couldn’t stop smiling to myself. As I write this, I STILL can’t stop smiling. As one of NWT’s seasonal education officers, I have the opportunity to spend my days at some of Norfolk’s most beautiful places, but I have this thirst to experience as much of Norfolk’s beauty as I can, so on my days off I am constantly on the move, when really I know I need to just slow down – or even sit in a river! By spending time in my own neighbourhood, and just stopping and sitting and listening, I encountered a small but significant animal that I have spent years searching for. I now have lots of scratches and achy legs but I also have one blurry photograph and incredible memories of the day I sat in a river and a water vole came and sat next to me.

A tale of two poppies

 David North, Head of People and Wildlife

Poppies on edge of wheatfield, Alan Porter

Poppy show offs,
in tissue thin red party frocks.
Diaphanous dazzlers,
you wear your scarlet dress for a day only,
then cast it off at night with gay abandon.
But what a party trick,
To dance with the wind
and scatter seeds down centuries
from pepper-pot time capsules.
David North

Everyone knows poppies are red! But this is a tale of two Norfolk poppies – the much loved common or field poppy which indeed glows red, crimson or scarlet depending on the light, and its less well-known, but equally beautiful seashore cousin, the horned poppy , which is a wonderful translucent yellow.

Every year I look forward to the sight of a field of wheat or barley rippling in the wind and filled with dancing poppy heads. It’s one of Norfolk’s great wildlife spectacles. A plant light and colour show perhaps only rivalled by the very different, but equally wonderful , sight of carpets of bluebells in our Norfolk ancient woodlands. If bluebells are the great spring plant extravaganza then surely poppies, painting a whole field scarlet, are the summer show-stopper of the plant world. And get ready, in a field near you this show may well just be getting under way. Now is the time to keep your eyes peeled for showy red poppies swaying in the breeze along roadside verges, transforming the disturbed ground of building sites and even town developments into areas of ethereal beauty, adding a splash of colour amongst the green heads of barley and wheat in our Norfolk countryside or just occasionally appearing in such numbers that whole fields turn a red that can be seen from miles away. I know of few natural spectacles that can stop cars in their tracks but several times while enjoying the sight of a whole field of poppies have heard the squeal of brakes and seen cars reverse up roads to pull in next to a poppy field.

These red poppies are of course the common or field poppy, a species whose abundance gave its name to ‘poppyland’ the area of the North Norfolk coast between Cromer and Overstrand. It was more than a century ago in the 1880s that writer Clement Scott first coined the name and with his articles in the Daily Telegraph and the publication in 1886 of his book ‘Poppy Land’ helped popularise this area with tourists from London.

‘On the grass of the cliff, at the edge of the steep,
God planted a garden – a garden of sleep!
‘Neath the blue of the sky, in the green of the corn,
It is there that the regal red poppies are born!
Clement Scott

Doubtless these nineteenth century tourists arriving by steam train at Cromer and Sheringham stations would have been able to buy any number of poppy-themed souvenirs in the shops and promenade along the sandy North Norfolk cliffs where poppies grew then as they still do today.

Our affection for poppies in Norfolk remains undiminished today. When the charity PlantLife first came up with a list of County flowers that had Norfolk’s County flower as alexanders there was so much dissent that a vote was carried out and common poppy won the day so we are now the only county to share a county flower. Essex also claims the poppy as its county flower.

The poppy is a great survivor and though not as common as in the past it remains a widespread plant. Poppy seeds have the remarkable ability to remain viable in the soil for decades and in some cases for 80 years or even a century or more. This explains why when soil left unturned for years is first disturbed poppies will often germinate and flower. Flanders fields during the First World War became red with poppies where shells had cratered the ground:

‘In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.’
John McCrae 1915

The poppy has also been the symbol of rememberance on Armistice Day since 11 November 1921 when the Royal British Legion held its first ‘Poppy Day’. More anciently poppies were associated with the Greek goddess of fertility, Demeter and the Roman crop goddess Ceres. Not many wildflowers are so loved as to have become children’s names but both Rose and Poppy are still used in this way.

Yellow-horned poppy, photo by David North

The red corn poppy however is not the only beautiful poppy that grows wild in Norfolk. From June onwards along shingly parts of our coast the nationally scarce yellow-horned poppy grows in abundance in a few places. If you like poppies then this more localised plant is well worth a trip to enjoy. Indeed you could argue that this is our only truly native wild poppy. Many people believe that our red poppies arrived in England with our first Neolithic farmers who brought primitive strains of cereals with them, emmer and einkorn and mixed with the corn would have been seeds of red poppies. The yellow-horned poppy has probably grown in Norfolk long before the first people arrived walking from the continent across land which is now sea after the end of the last ice age. I wonder if these first hunter-gatherers marveled at the beauty of the flowers around them – certainly they would have relied on an intimate knowledge of which plants were edible and which plants could be used to treat illness. Did poppy seeds form part of their diet? I wonder.

To see yellow-horned poppies there is no better place to go than the shingle edgeland of Norfolk – the great shingle ridge that runs from Blakeney Point to Weybourne. Walk a few hundred yards east from Norfolk Wildlife Trust’s beach car park at Cley and you will find one of the best displays of yellow-horned poppy in Norfolk. They are one of our most spectacular coastal flowers. Best viewed in the morning as like their country cousin common poppies many flowers last for less than a day – the fine, translucent petals opening in the morning and sometime falling by early afternoon. They seem to glow with an inner light –shining even when the sun isn’t, their diaphanous petals having a fairly-tale like quality as if they are flowers from another time or another world. Certainly I never tire of their beauty and though I have photographed them many times never quite feel I have captured that inner light they seem to possess. The horns referred to in their name are the seed pods. Unlike common poppies with their fascinating and intricate seed capsules that work like pepper-pots shaking the tiny black ripe seeds out as they sway in the wind or are knocked by passing animals the horned poppy has an long thin pod. This is said to be the longest seed pod of any British wild flower and can be 15 to 30cms long. Like all poppies the seeds are tiny. Yellow horned poppy plants have been seen bowling along beaches in the winter winds ‘tumbleweed’ fashion and the seeds are also very resistant to sea-water. So like their farmland red relatives they are great survivors. Living on Norfolk’s shingle ‘edgeland’ and surviving the worst of winter storms, battered by salt spray and icy north-easterly gales from the Arctic each winter, baked dry in summer by desiccating wind and relentless sun, and with roots into little more than mobile shingle, flint and sands this plant still produces to my mind one of our most magical and delicate of flowers often bejeweled with dew drops and a glorious soft lemon-yellow set against silver-green and slightly downy leaves.

Red or yellow our Norfolk poppies deserve to be celebrated and protected.