Shove' up a bit

Some excellent numbers of shoveler on site at the moment - 175 seen by Les and Margaret on Sunday.  The big wildfowl highlight though were two female scaup on D res - thanks to HVWG for this shot:

More write up on Erich's blog.  The other highlight which is something of a long stayer, white fronted goose on Watton NR (HVWG):

Hopefully there'll be another 169 like last year to follow.  Two pink feet were also with it amongst the greylags. The gull roost is still spectacular too - adult med gull again on D.  This was tonight's scene - some of over 150 great black backed gulls on the res:

Also present were around 150 lapwing which seemed very agitated and repeatedly flying close to the water surface - no peregrine seen - but certainly suspected.  The lapwing use the water as a deterrent to an attack as they know it wont risk making a kill so close to the surface.  A cream crown marsh harrier flew south across the res tonight with a male seen on Sunday, and a few buzzard sightings.

 

The woods have turned up more siskins, lesser redpoll, bullfinch and jay.  Here was Roy Vincent's possible last chiffchaff of the year from Thursday:

Though Graham Slack reported a blackcap - not necessarily a last of but possibly another Germanic invader.  Pied wagtail by Roy:

Roy also got some excellent pictures of some of the winter thrushes like these redwing:

 Songthrush:

 And blackbird:

It would seem that Roy is the man to follow at the moment with three otter sightings in as many days - including one running along the woodland ride from North Marsh this morning! All these sightings seem to be coming in at around 9am at the moment if you fancy trying to spot one on North marsh.  Alternatively the Robert Fuller Gallery is running an otter field signs walk at the reserve on Sunday - all the details are on their website.

And finally thanks to the persistence of Doug Fairweather the fungi list creeps ever closer to 300 for site; One is a Helvella sp. known collectively as Saddles.  Even though Helvella crispa (White Saddle) is classed as widespread and common it was still a great find DF:

 

Number two is a bracket found on a dead Larch. This required help from Michael Jordan. Ischnoderma benzoinum (Benzoin Bracket) is classed as rare in his book, other books say uncommon, but it is certainly not run of the mill: