The Whitlingham Bird Report for 2023 is now available to download from the Bird Reports page or from here

WHITLINGHAM: Some butterflies, and a question

19th May 2012

Lets start with a quiz question...

The scenario is this: You are at a wildlife trust reserve, complete with nice visitors centre, and you find a fairly rare bird.  The reserve collects donations from visitors, and its a week day so you are unlikely to be deluged by too many twitchers all at once.  So, do you:
a) Release news
b) Watch the bird all day then release news the next day.

Please send your answers on a postcard to:
Why Didn't We Know Earlier?
Birds & Beer Office
Norwich

A winner will be selected at random and sent a copy of the book "Knowing How To Separate Rhetorical and Literal Questions".

Anyway.  I went to Whitlingham in the hope of finding my own Night Heron.  The broads were both being used for a range of watersports activities, and were accordingly rather barren.  Two broods of Mute Swan cygnets have hatched, including the ones from the nest by the bird screen track.  Looking across to Thorpe I found a lone Oystercatcher, and on the Great Broad there was one Common Sandpiper.  The day was a bit more productive butterfly-wise, with 8 Orange-tips, 2 Green-veined Whites and one tatty Peacock.  I also saw my first Large Red Damselfly of the year and several teneral Damselfly sp.

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