Tag Archives: merlin

Birds at Frampton Marsh

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As you can see from the title we went to Frampton Marsh on the Lincolnshire coast today. Unlike some of our previous visits to reserves, it was an excellent day.

Apart from the massive flock of Brent Geese that arrived as we were walking to one of the hides, we say Golden Plover by the thousand and so many Dunlin that the air actually hummed with the movement of their wings. At one time the sky was so full, with half a dozen flocks criss-crossing, I almost got a decent photo. Of course, with my normal level of skill, all I could produce is a view of a sky that looks like I have specks of dirt on my computer screen.

Can you see the birds?
Great sky at FRampton Marsh

The day in general, was pretty good. The weather, after the troubles of Storm Doris, was mainly sunny and quite warm at times. We saw a good variety of birds, including a Merlin chasing a flock of Lapwing, a lone Barnacle Goose, three Ringed Plovers, a Curlew, two Black-tailed Godwits and a Snipe.

Brent Geese at FRampton Marsh
Barnacle Goose hiding face
Canada Goose

The telescope is working well after someone with a similar model of tripod showed me how to cure the wobble problem, and it helped find some of the better birds. With the day being so sunny it also gave us some great views of distant birds. I am, however, going to have to get a harness to carry it, as it’s a lot heavier than you’d think by the end of the day.

The Visitor Centre is a bit spartan, but it had a machine for tea and coffee, toilets and a cheery volunteer looking after it so what more do you want?

Black-tailed Godwit and Dunlin
Black-tailed Godwit feeding enthusiastically

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Lambing starts!

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Finally! We had lambs today, and though we have had a couple die we have three survivors. It can be a bit like that at the start. They are a couple of weeks late according to the calculations but it’s been miserable weather and you can’t blame them if they’ve been slow to appear.

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The goats are still hanging on, though you can see definite movement from the kids so things are moving along. Same goes for Farmer Rose’s new grandchild, who is being similarly reluctant to show.

Sometimes farming can be a bit like fishing – lots of waiting and not much to show for it apart from cold feet and a pessemistic view of life.

Meanwhile Tim reports seeing bonding behaviour from the buzzards, with an amount of close formation work and some upside down flying. He was on his bike at the time and they were flying at the same sped he was peddling so he got an excellent view. To be honest with you he’s not the biggest of people and if I’d have been his size I’d have worried they were sizing me up as prey. Fortunately I’m big enough to be beyond the capacity of our native birds. I’d have trouble if a roc ever flies over, as they can apparantly handle an elephant, but it’s unlikely to happen so I’m not going to worry about it. Tim’s also reported seeing what looks like a Merlin twice in the last week. He’s unsure about it because it’s not something you’d expect to see round here but there’s been one spotted in the north of the county today, according to the Nottinghamshire Birdwatchers’ website.

Planning is underway for the tree training next month, we’ve been drawing trees and discussing photosynthesis. People seem to have enjoyed the painting more than the photosynthesis. We’d probably have more luck in late summer when we had plums and walnuts to use as examples…

Meanwhile we’ve harvested a couple of the remaining leeks for tea and the last few will be going next week. It’s been a poor showing from the vegetable beds this year, mainly due to a poor showing from the gardeners, but we’ll be conducting composting trials on the raised kitchen beds this year so we should do better. We also have the bean trench and quite a lot of compost so our intentions are good.

To be fair, my intentions are probably the best thing about me. As Augusten Burroughs said: “I myself am made entirely of flaws, stitched together with good intentions.”