Nature Notes February 2024
Nature Notes February 2024
There was a strong, cold, westerly wind blowing as we walked down to Wells harbour on a bright morning in early February. The tide was fairly well in and the ‘Albatross’, a wooden sailing vessel, was riding high alongside the quay. As we scanned the water with our binoculars, we noticed a small grebe swimming across the channel towards the boat, its dark crowned head held high and the white on its neck going up behind the eye. It came right up to the harbour wall before starting to dive, and as it did so, we could see that there was a thin orange line between the dark nape and white breast. It was a Slavonian Grebe! They have a drab plumage in winter but this one was just beginning to get the bright orange feathering on the neck which makes it so distinctive in summer, a sure indication that it will soon be on its way back to Eastern Europe to breed. We walked on as far as Lady Anne’s Road at Holkham, along the back of the pines, and for most of the way we were accompanied by the clamour of thousands of Pink-footed Geese feeding on the wet grazing meadows between the pines and the coast road. Some of them may well have been in the skeins flying over Reepham that many of us have seen during their to-ing and fro-ing between their North Norfolk feeding grounds and those of the Broads. It is always exhilarating to hear them, especially as the birds were just beyond the tangle of bramble and reeds that screened them from view. We came back along the beach and down ‘The Run’ as the channel between the town and lifeboat house is called, where the tide was now on its way out and a few waders were quietly feeding along the water line. A Curlew flew in and giving its wonderful ‘curly-curly’ spring call as it landed. A small dapper Turnstone, with tortoiseshell markings above clean white underparts, tossed aside debris and small stones in search of a meal. Fortunately, the small rock that we had turned over in the morning, to expose a cluster of very active Sea Slaters, was much too heavy for it to move, so it had to make do with Sand Hoppers and other tit-bits along the high tide line. Sea Slaters are a large marine species of woodlouse and extremely active, especially when their sheltering stones are tossed aside. The largest we saw was at least an inch long, but wasn’t very keen to be seen and quickly flattened itself into the soft sand and shingle, pretending not to be there.
Do let me know if you see any interesting wildlife (rachel.42rr@btinternet.com)
