Thursday 20 June 2013

20th of June: They seek him here, they seek him there...

...and here he is on Blakeney Point!:
Scarlet Pimpernel is in bloom. Its small but distinctively-coloured flowers can be found in the shingly lows and grey dunes. Baroness Orczy was inspired by the red flowers when writing her novel 'The Scarlet Pimpernel' and the name of the hero was Sir Percy Blakeney.

Cat's-ear are starting to bloom too, their yellow flowers are abundant on the dunes. Cat's-ears are in the daisy family and are sometimes called Jack-go-to-bed-at-noon because the flowers close in the afternoon and open again in the morning.

It has been a good couple of days for insects, with sightings including a Hummingbird Hawkmoth. On Tuesday there were around 200 Silver Y moths seen on the Point, Silver Ys are migrants, crossing the sea to get here.

Redshanks seem to be having a good year on Blakeney Point. We have seen several chicks successfully hatch...

The Grey Patridge nest we found at the start of the month has also hatched, with 19 chicks hatching from 21 eggs.

Common Tern chicks were starting to hatch this morning. Arctic Terns are still a few days away.

Last week we did a Little Tern count to feed into a survey across the whole Norfolk coast. We are now up to 115 pairs, which is around an eighth of the Norfolk total.

Today we recorded 77 Common Scoter, 1 Velvet Scoter, 1 Little Gull, 114 Knot and 80 Bar-tailed Godwits.

In other bird news, we have a new friend who has been in the vicinity of the Lifeboat House for over a week, sometimes even venturing into our kitchen...
Rowena the racing pigeon

- Ajay and Paul (photos by Matt and Ajay)

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