Natural Suffolk

 Living up to their common name, doing their stuff on the Somerset Levels picking out food from the ground disturbed by the cattle.  You get Little Egrets in this area too, but the yellow bill is diagnostic w.r.t. the black bill of Little Egret  From the RSPB They often spend time close to livestock like sheep and cows and grab the insects and worms their hooves disturb.  and that's pretty much what these guys seem to be doing on this misty late Autumn day

I found  Bonny Wood is a slight headache to locate. First go to Barking Tye, parking is difficult there. SWT say park at village hall, I parked a little bit of a way down the side road past the bend of the main road to the right coming from Needham Market. The footpath is just by the side of the water tower going past someone’s house. This reserve is probably wet in winter. I took a bunch of photos back in 2016 but failed to make any useful notes. It's a nice recollection of a lovely summer walk.  view from path start over fields   Hedgerow blooms              Coppice stools     reserve entrance     crossways   starting on the way back from the crossways    way back with water tower in the distance    

 This one was a hunt for yellowhammers for Yellowhammers.net Upper Hollesley common Recording potential poor because the road is very noisy   Your browser does not support the audio tag but this recording was good enough to qualify the song type. There seems to eb a general principle that scientific analysis can tolerate recordings that I'd categorise as rough as guts . I came across this electric blue critter on the common and this cryptic moth the heath where I recorded the yellowhammer Tunstall Common this has more recording potential, road is not too bad. though many tractors shifting harvest this time Your browser does not support the audio tag Tunstall common   Blaxhall Common nothing heard this time. Very ferny. Sent in an oldie yellowhammer recording from 2007 from the nightjar walk Your browser does not support the audio tag Blaxhall Common

Arger Fen is in the Polstead region in the south-west of Suffolk. It’s on high ground - you can see Sudbury TV mast from there. The initial plan was to see if there was any sound recording potential. It was disappointing on that front due to the proximity to Stansted, but it was a very pleasant walk. Reserve entrance      Sudbury TV mast in the distance Recording potential - very low Noise sources Stansted is about 30 miles away, there is extensive aircraft noise with the occasional break as they alternate the runway pattern also a road though that is not so bad Long recording including that plane noise Your browser does not support the audio tag I did record a yellowhammer for Yellowhammers.net   Your browser does not support the audio tag. Disappointing from that front, aircraft noise is increasingly pervasive in Suffolk, but I hadn't realised this was so close to Stansted.

Buzzard   Herd of deer The herd of deer is actually meant to be there, SWT use them to keep the place open a bit

  Curlew in flight I've usually only seen curlews on the ground feeding, nice to spot one in flight here lovely flock of lapwings wheeling about Stonechats

and I have a taste for chicken. Unlucky tonight, presumably a hefty zap to the snout offends… Incoming stoat on lower right-hand-side Stoats and weasels are native predators to Britain, and stoats in particular have a bad attitude when it comes to chicken, so we’ve had to reinforce the chicks’ house with narrower gauge mesh, 1.5cm seems to be the generally expected smallest gap a stoat can get through. Stoats don’t like covering open ground, preferring to move along the hedgerows like a lot of native wildlife. This is reasonable evidence of a stoat being the culprit – these cameras aren’t very good for something that small. They work by sensing the predators body heat, but the light-of-a-thousand-suns effect of the flash makes it better for large predators like foxes than for something only a foot long. Not your lucky day today, Mr Stoat. Hopefully a couple of zaps to the snout will put you off and you’ll get back to what you should be doing, controlling mouse-like rodent...