Brenda had – not unexpectedly! – a very busy day of services today, and – as I had been away for a week – I spent the morning catching up on emails and working out what I needed to do over the coming days. Before Brenda’s final service of the day we went over to King’s Lynn to see her mother in hospital, and then had enough time for about 45 minutes at Snettisham.
I drove us down to the beach car park and we had a wander around the interesting area of habitat behind the sea defences. It looked very much as though there had been a wildfire there – presumably in the exceptional heat last summer – and so a lot of the landscape was gnarled and blackened, with the burnt branches creating strange and twisted shapes.
There were the usual suspects – plenty of chiffchaffs and Cetti’s warblers – plus a nice male stonechat, a small flock of linnet, and I heard my first sedge warbler of the year: It doesn’t go on the list though as I didn’t manage to see it. There’ll be plenty more in the coming weeks! There were new flowers though…..
Brenda writes: “I had forgotten how wonderful the habitat at the Snettisham beach is. The scrubland behind the dunes is fantastic. In some areas it was showing the scars from last year’s fires, as Steve mentions above. There was one new species of flowering plant: I always enjoy seeing spring beauty, which is an unusual plant. Its lower leaves are oval but the top leaves on each stem encircle it, with the flowers growing from the centre.”
New species for April 9th:
Flowers: spring beauty,
TOTALS TO DATE:
Birds = 154
Moths = 17
Wildflowers = 40