Nature Notes October 2025
Nature Notes
With leaves turning colour and storms forecast for the next day, we decided to go to Kelling Heath in early October and do one of our favourite walks down to the sea. There was still a little purple bloom from late flowering heather but the Bracken had turned to gold and russet. Nestled beneath a gorse bush and quietly resting, we spotted a cryptically patterned reptile with an almost black zigzag along its brown back: a female adder! She was hidden with her head under a sprig of gorse and initially took no notice of us, despite the fact we were within a metre of her refuge. After a minute or so, she raised her surprisingly small head, tasted the air, then slowly slipped away into the safety of the dense vegetation behind. It will not be long before she seeks out a suitable north facing hole in a bank, in which to hibernate for the winter. As we dropped down towards the coast road, we found that the sweet chestnuts were ripe, as the ground was strewn with green prickly cases, out of which peeped the shiny, deep mahogany chestnuts; food for voles, mice, squirrels and deer, as well as any human who liked to pick them up. A familiar ‘wink-wink’ call reached us on the wind, and there, high above, we could just make out a small skein of pink-footed geese straggling away to the south-east. They may have been arriving for the winter from their stop-over in Scotland, as they journeyed from their Icelandic breeding grounds to the good feeding to be had in Norfolk. Later in our walk, we came upon travellers from the south being driven north by climate change. A great green bush-cricket was calling from dense brambles as we approached the sea. This large insect has responded to the warming climate by growing longer wings, allowing it to disperse from its only Norfolk site at Reedham and now can be found dotted along the North Norfolk coast where there is suitable scrubby habitat. A more obvious newcomer was the Cattle Egret busy feeding among cows and their calves on the wet meadow of Kelling Pool. Forty years ago, this was a species only found in southern Spain, an area that has become too dry for them, so they have been spreading north and now can be found in wet meadows with cattle in various parts of England. They are a short-legged member of the heron family, with a white plumage and bright yellow beak. This one looked very much at home chasing after insects disturbed by the animals around it
Do let me know if you see any interesting wildlife (rachel.42rr@btinternet.com)
