25th August 2012

I sacrificed a day of wildlife recording around the valley to visit the British Birdfair for the first time in 16 years on the 17th. The Birdfair is held over 3 days every August and is definitely worth a visit. It has grown considerably over the years and the number of marquees has more than doubled since my last visit. It is a great place to catch up with old friends and make new ones and a chance to see a plethora of wildlife "celebrities".

Strangely, not one of my many purchases had anything to do with birds. After spending most of the day visiting all of the many marquees now present, my main purchase was a bat detector so I could find out what is using the valley. So I returned home a little bit poorer, but with the ability to continuing recording wildlife after dark, ID DVDs for dragonflies and damselflies and butterflies, a subscription to British Wildlife - a superb bi-monthly publication that is so packed with wildlife information that I would recommend anyone interested in wildlife to subscribe to as well - and the controversial "Arrivals and Rivals: a birding oddity" by Adrian Riley.

An early shift at work the next day gave me the opportunity to investigate some of the bats using the Gaywood Valley. I spent the evening watching for owls and found at least one short-eared owl was present. Only another 11 days to go until the 10 month anniversary of the first record! A barn owl was also seen quartering over the valley and gave us some fantastically close views yet again.

We waited until it was almost dark before we started to return home. We slowly walked back as I turned on the bat detector for the first time, not knowing what we were going to find. I attended a Bat Walk in The Walks (a park in the middle of King's Lynn) and knew how to operate the detector and how to tell the difference between common pipistrelle and soprano pipistrelle.

There was nothing present on the main valley as we walked back towards the cycle path. We turned towards home and the detector remained stubbornly silent. Looking ahead, there didn't seem to be much about either, but then I got my first response. A common pipistrelle was hunting on the edge of the Springwood School field. We would never have seen it without the detector and we stood entranced as we finally managed to catch sight of it.

The bat detector has opened up a whole new world and we continued to find more common pipistrelles as we walked alongside the school. I was a little disappointed not to have found a soprano pipestrelle as we neared the Gayton Road end of the cycle path, when the quality of the call on the detector changed. Triumphantly, I changed the frequency and to find that I had definitely found my first soprano!

I left the detector on as I made my way home through the Fairstead estate and found I kept getting some kind of interference. I decided that this must be due to the street lights and ignored it. Then, as I was approaching my block of flats, I got the interference again and I wasn't anywhere near a street light. I twiddled the frequency on the detector and heard a series of short, sharp "slaps". I checked my ID and frequency guide to find that the "interference" was actually the call of a serotine bat and not the street lighting at all. This was a life tick for me, and it has been outside my flat all of the time!

I did another walk around on the following Monday and found a total of 9 common pipistrelles and 8 serotines along the cycle path between Reffley and Gayton Road. I have walked this route a number of times in the dark and had no idea that so many bats were present along it!

A butterfly transect on the 23rd proved an interesting day. Disturbingly, there were very few present and demonstrates the devastating effect the awful weather we have had through April, May, June and July. I only counted a couple of peacocks, meadow browns and only a single large white and gatekeeper. There were slightly better numbers of some freshly emerged speckled woods with 5 counted along the transect.

Speckled wood

A female marsh harrier was seen and a buzzard could be heard constantly calling over Reffley Wood. But the main interest of the day lay with the dragonflies. I have had only one record of ruddy darter over the two years I have been recording in the Gaywood Valley, so it was fantastic to record many males over a wide area as we walked the transect. The first migrant hawkers of the year were also recorded today, along with an occasional southern hawker and brown hawker. A small number of female common darters were also seen ovipositing in the Reffley Reservoir.

A single grass snake was recorded in the usual basking spot in Reffley Wood, along with several muntjac and a couple of frogs. A single harlequin ladybird was noted on a hazel leaf next to the Springwood School and, just as we finished, a new species for the area was seen in the shape of a forest bug that was settled on the pedestrian crossing railings on Gayton Road!

Forest bug

Introduction

The Gaywood Valley is situated on the edge of Kings Lynn in Norfolk and is only a recent discovery for myself. I have been birding for 25 years now and have never managed to find a suitable place that I can call my local patch. I have investigated many places that should be suitable, but have always found that they aren't good enough, either by lack of actual birds, or too difficult to get to to be able to bird regularly.

I have been lucky over the 25 years to have either volunteered or worked on some of the best birding sites in the country, but it's not the same as having your own 'personal' patch. I have always wanted somewhere to call 'my own' - a place where no one else regularly records the wildlife. A place to carry out transects for butterflies and bees, to explore the vegetation and actually use some of the books I have spent my hard earned cash on, but have never used. And to just generally get involved with as much survey work as I can manage.

I haven't worked in conservation for over ten years now and can't afford to keep taking the bus up to the north Norfolk coast. So I needed to find somewhere local, but knew of nowhere to go. I was on holiday early last year and, desperate to find some fieldwork I could do, found the BTO Atlas website and found that there was a free tetrad right on my doorstep. I didn't think I would find much there as it didn't look promising on my OS map, but went for it anyway. And boy, am I glad I did!

I first visited the tetrad on the very last weekend in May, setting off without much expectation of recording anything much other than the usual fare of house sparrows, starlings and blue tits, and maybe the odd blackcap and chiffchaff along the way. But what I had not expected to find there were birds that I thought I would have to go travel further afield for, such as willow warblers and whitethroats and, to my great astonishment, reed buntings and reed and sedge warblers. That was it, I was hooked and new I had found my long awaited Local Patch.

If I was astonished on my first visit, I was staggered on my second visit to add lesser whithethroat and a reeling grasshopper warbler. As far as I was concerned, I had found Nirvana! I have had some fantastic encounters since last May and many, what I have come to call, Gaywood Wow factors. So I have finally taken the plunge into blogging to share these experiences and maybe(?) enthuse someone else to get out there and find there own Patch and to serve as proof to never give up.