• Event: Talk – Coypu, Mink and the Norfolk Mink Project

    Simon Baker, from the Norfolk Mink Project, will be giving a talk at the Burgh Reading Room on Tuesday 9th October at 7.00pm. All are welcome and entry is free. (See http://burghlife.co.uk)

    Mink have been active on the Bure for some time. They have become naturalized on English rivers having originally escaped, or have been let loose from, fur farms many years ago. They are an efficient predator and will kill everything they can catch – fish, birds, mammals such as Water Voles and inverterbrates. If a mix of wildlife is to survive on the Bure, the Mink need to be controlled. This is where the Norfolk Mink Project plays a role.

    Background information: https://thenorfolkminkproject.org.uk

     

     

  • December: Kingfisher

    Thankfully the sight of a Kingfisher is not a rare event along this stretch of the Bure. But, even by our normal standards this year has been a particularly rich one. The Mill pair successfully raised a large brood and, during our Summer morning walks, we followed their fishing and feeding flights as they worked to raise them. On one notable morning and somewhat unusually, I even stumbled across two of them perched on the ground on the edge of the mill pool.

    But, as I write, in early December, the position is somewhat different. Numbers have thinned out. The young had dispersed in the Summer and the fewer permanent residents have re-secured their territories. Most of the trees have lost their leaves and the light has taken on that washed-out Winter quality. As a result the electric blues and greens of the Kingfisher stand out almost shockingly, or they did on Saturday as we watched a single bird  work the ditch.  This bird was either oblivious of us or was happy to go about his fishing whilst we watched. I realized that I was holding my breath as I watched – the bird’s head turned towards the surface of the water, gently moving left and right before it sprang downwards out of sight before returning to the same perch. Time and again. Gradually working its way along the drain, the colours glowing in the weak morning sunlight.

     

  • Old brickwork at Oxnead Lock

    The decaying brickwork of the Oxnead Lock. According to Edwin Rose (writing in 1993 as part of the Norfolk Archaeological team at Gressenahll) this brickwork was probably built in 1851 when the Mill was refurbished, although it is possible that some parts of the structure may date back to 1775 when the original engineering work on the cut was completed.

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  • Brampton Autumn – silence with burst of birdsong

    It is the Autumnal silence which hits you on an early morning walk from Brampton to Oxnead. Silence punctuated only by occasional sharp bursts of song – a Robin, the screech of a Jay and the repetitive fluting of a Nuthatch in the Keeper’s Wood. Then there were Kingfishers – a pair chasing and calling upstream to the mill pool, another single bird calling from a perch above the sluice. It has been a good year for Kingfisher numbers so far, with numbers increased from a successful breeding season.

  • Brampton Spring – Palm Sunday

    The Island was full of Snipe. As we walked along the footpath they spring from the river margin singly and in groups, or “Wisps” as they are known – such a descriptive collective noun; covering both their alarm call and their diminutive and rapidly scattering disappearance. Yesterday’s northerly breeze has calmed and it was now so Spring-like. A promise of warmer weather in the week ahead.

    David reports of a flock of chattering birds in the river Alders – from their size, noise and description we wonder if they were Waxwings pausing briefly on their way north.

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