Nature Notes February 2022
Our first trip of the year which took us away from home was on a bright sunny day in late January. Beyond Burnham Market we were delighted to see two Hares racing across a field. Further on, as we began to drop down towards Titchwell, a couple of deer pushed their way through a hedge onto the verge. Their rabbit ears and surprised-looking faces confused us temporarily, but when they turned back the way they had come, we could see their brown, rounded bottoms and realised that they were Chinese Water Deer; a long way from water!
That wasn’t the only surprising mammal of the day, having walked down to the beach and along to Thornham Channel, we were walking back along the public footpath when we came upon an excited group of people looking at something in a dyke. ‘It’s near the Heron,’ they said, and anxiously peering through binoculars we saw it come out onto the bank with a fish in its mouth – an Otter! We watched it for at least ten minutes as it ate its catches on the bank, dived back into the water to look for more, annoyed the Heron by fishing right beneath its beak and finally swimming down the channel towards us, before climbing out onto the bank again, disappearing from sight as it crossed a small ditch, then up onto a broad muddy bank where it sniffed about briefly before continuing on its way down into the reedbed! It was our most amazing close encounter with an Otter ever. Fifty years ago they were extremely rare, having been hunted almost to extinction in East Anglia, and only after the Otter Trust started releasing captive bred animals did their numbers begin to recover.
Closer to home, Annie and Ru had a fantastic view of a Buzzard in the road tearing at a carcass. They could see its talons gripping the meat while it tore at the flesh with its sharp, hooked beak. What an exciting thing to see on the way to school! For those of you who cannot get out as much, do look at the mosses growing on walls around the town. There were at least three different species on one short stretch of garden wall in Station Road: a slightly fluffy Grey Cushion-moss looking for all the world like a small sea urchin, a Bristle-moss with delicate pointed capsules held just above the leaves and the ubiquitous Wall Screw-moss. There was even an extremely small insect, only just visible to the naked eye, the enlarged photograph of which showed that its body to be a startling electric blue!
Do let me know if you see anything of interest rachel.42rr@btinternet.com
