Friday 11 February 2011

Snakes awake...

We had thought that the dead grass snake we had found on Sunday was a one off, but Maurice Gordon sent through these photos of a 7" yearling he had found on O res path the same day - in full health. He subsequently moved it onto the grass so as not to get trodden on:

These were taken as part of Maurice's photo course - for details see here.

Hopefully the weather won't catch it out.

Other sightings in over the week included 6 common buzzards thermaling over D woods on tuesday. The two red head smew have been picked up fairly regularly on Watton NR. The willow tit was seen back at the centre along with all the brambling again today after a two week absence. Tawny owls have been very active as soon as the sun goes down.

Another sign of spring was the return of the first oystercatcher to south marsh east on Thursday. Doug and Martin have been driven to snails - but the first moth trap is going out tonight. On north marsh were some freshly nibbled reed stems - water voles out and about?:

Finally after saying I always miss the sparrowhawk in the last post - whilst tapping away on the computer today I heard all the alarm calls from the blackbirds, and it waited long enough for me to get the camera ready:

Also it was a different individual to Vince's from last week - sparrowhawks seem to be the photographers choice this month - Chris Cox too managed to snap one on D res wall here.