Author: Adam Yardley

With the arrival of June we have ever more newly hatched young to spot and Otters are making an appearance with surprising regularity.

Three out of the five Great Crested Grebe pairs that we reported were nesting on Salhouse Broad have now hatched delightful little “Grebelets”.  Our passengers have loved seeing the Grebelets being carried around on their mother’s back – as shown on this picture.

There are still two Grebes sitting on their remarkable floating nests on Salhouse Broad – a sight that is also capturing the imagination of our passengers.  It’s surprising how many materials are used to build the nest – from lily leaves to reeds and even a gold chocolate wrapper that one has collected as decoration.  The male Grebes work really hard collecting these materials and then pass it over to the female on the nest who carefully decides where to arrange the “furniture”.

This picture shows a Grebe nesting on the nearby Hoveton Great Broad, which is located just opposite Salhouse Broad but can only be reached via a special nature trail, accessible only by boat. It’s an important nature reserve that has been closed to boat traffic for over a century and is well worth a visit by day boat.

A highlight on Hoveton Great Broad is a large number of Common Terns arriving from Africa to nest on a specially designed nesting platform (shown below).  The population is being carefully surveyed by Natural England, as fewer Common Terns had arrived in recent years but things are looking more positive for 2017.

It’s not just the Common Terns using the nesting platform.  This picture shows a Black Headed Gull nesting amongst the terns as well as a cormorant peering over.  This situation is being monitored by Natural England as Black Headed Gulls can outcompete the Terns, but also offer more aggressive protection against predators.  In short, it’s hard to say whether the Black Headed Gulls are a good or a bad thing for the Terns but we will keep you posted!

On the subject of Cormorants, very large numbers of the sea birds are arriving on Hoveton Great Broad and this picture shows them seeming to hunt in packs – although in reality they could all just be following a large shoal of fish.

In amongst the jungle-like carr woodland at Hoveton Great Broad nature trail we have been enjoying watching a Woodpecker feeding her chicks in a hole in a tree – as shown below.

Back out on the river near Wroxham Broad we took these lovely pictures of a Heron hunting in the margins and a Gadwall duck.  Take a close look at this endangered duck, which is on the RSPB Amber list, and you’ll see that it’s grey colour is made up of exquisitely fine barring and speckling.

Back in Wroxham we now have three families of swans with their delightful little Cygnets.  The swans seem much less territorial than last year and seem to be crossing over territory within the river without too much squabbling.

Excitingly, our boatyard is proving a hotspot for otter activity. Years ago Otters would have been a very rare sight indeed but we are now seeing them with remarkable regularity.  One of our day boat lads, Joe, managed to film a dog otter walking across our car park while our skipper Oli, had an Otter come up right under his feet while filling up the water tank on one of our trip boats.  He managed to grab his camera in time to show the otter swimming away across our boat basin.

Some passengers have also been lucky enough to see Otters on our boat trips.  Perhaps the most amusing sighting came when an otter ran behind a lady tending to her riverside garden in Wroxham village without her even noticing it – though all our passengers did!  The best sighting, however, came just outside Barton House in Wroxham, where a female otter swam right beside our trip boat – so everyone got a great view!

Another great sight in our boat basin, pictured by one of our skippers Tobi below, is a beautiful Eyed Hawk Moth in our boat basin.  If provoked the insect flashes its hindwings, which are decorated with intense blue and black ‘eyes’ on a pinkish background.

But perhaps our favourite sighting of an insect is Norfolk’s iconic Swallowtail butterfly – which we have seen on some of our trips on Woodbastwick reach.  It’s Britain’s largest butterfly, with a swallow like forked tail, but is only found on the Broads because its caterpillar can only eat a plant called milk parsley, which will only live in Norfolk’s reed and sedge beds.

Words and pictures – Oliver Franzen

With so many wonderful sights on the river why not join us for a boat trip or hire a dayboat and explore on your own.  Tel: 01603 782 207.

We are now over a week into May, and the changes are happening daily. Gone are the yellow flowers of daffodils and marsh marigold, replaced by whites of hawthorn and elder on the banks with delicate flowers of Jack by the Hedge appearing where clearance work was carried out in the winter.

From the vantage point of the wheelhouse on our trip boats, the skippers have a good view of our nesting birds and have been keeping an eye on a few. In particular, there are seven Great Crested grebes nests along the banks and sheltered in the broads.

However, it was none of these to hatch first.

At the beginning of the week, on Salhouse Broad in a distance corner, two grebes were seen swimming around with well camouflaged small fuzzy little shapes around them. Upon closer inspection, it turned out there were three ‘grebelets’, so tiny and stripy, looking for protection on mother’s back. One of our day boat lads, Matt, managed to capture them on camera whilst out exploring.

Grebes spend about four weeks incubating their eggs, so we should see some of the other nesting grebes hatch out some young soon.

Perhaps some of the cutest young birds out right now are the cygnets. First spotted on Saturday, a small family of swans bearing two cygnets near Decoy Staithe were being most adorable as we passed; one cygnet was already sheltered between mum’s wings and as we watched from the Queen of the Broads, its sibling struggled and kicked to join it in the comfort of the feathery enclosure.

Just a few days later, our skipper Richard spotted the largest family of cygnets we have seen for a while emerging from one of the dykes in the village. Here the swans have successfully hatched out eight cygnets! They seem to be using the same territory as a family of six last year, so we’ll keep an eye on them and see how they do. On Wednesday skipper Tobi reported only three of this family swimming around, but that’s because the other five were all hitching a ride on mum’s back!

Our river trips are something of a Great Crested Grebe nest and ‘newly hatched’ safari now.

In addition to Great Crested Grebes nesting on Salhouse Little Broad and a river bend in Woodbastwick, there are at least five Grebes nests on Salhouse Broad.  Remarkably four of these are very close together in what should be called “Grebe Bay”, near a spit of trees at the top end of the broad (shown below)!

Our passengers have loved seeing so many Grebe nests close together and watching the male Great Crested Grebes tirelessly carrying sticks and vegetation to add to the nest.

Grebes nests are particularly interesting because the diving birds rarely come to land, instead preferring to build a floating nest for their eggs and then carry their young around on their backs when they hatch.

The first of these pictures shows a Great Crested Grebe nesting on the edge of the trees on “Grebe Bay”, while the second shot shows another Grebe nesting only a few feet behind it further into the trees.

This area of Salhouse Broad is full of plenty of other birds too. Most notably the picture below shows a Common Tern nesting on the branches – one of the first of these agile little birds to have returned for the summer after its long migration from Africa.

A great highlight of heading out on the water at this time of year is seeing the dozens of adorable goslings and ducklings.

This picture shows the Greylag Goose family that we featured a few weeks ago on the blog nesting on Wroxham Island.  Having hatched their gosling on the island they moved them to a riverside garden for a week and are now taking them on their first swimming lessons at the bottom end of Wroxham village.

A primary reason that Greylags are the most common geese on the Broads is because they take such good care of their young. Sadly, ducklings are not usually cared for as well by their mothers but this mallard seems to be doing a good job of it.

Our skippers Richard and Tobi have reported seeing a swan carrying newly hatched cygnets on her back in Wroxham village. A wonderful sight which we will keep you posted on as soon as we manage to take a picture of it.

Finally, we suspect that a Kestrel is nesting near Wroxham Island, where we have seen it displaying its trademark fast wing beat hover a lot lately.   We will leave you with this picture, capturing the moment the Kestrel rested on a tree after being mobbed by gulls.

Pictures and words –  Oliver Franzen

With so much to see on the river at the moment why not join us for a “Grebes nest safari” on our regular boat trips or hire a dayboat and explore on your own.  Tel: 01603 782 207.

The Broads Tours team were all driven quackers on Sunday by the mystery of a very unusual duck, which appeared just outside the dayboat moorings.

One of our skippers, Tobi, managed to take this photograph of the bird, which rangers at RSPB Strumpshaw have just kindly identified for us.  It turned out to be a female Bufflehead duck, a species that is usually only found in America where it nests in woodpecker holes!

So why would there be a Bufflehead duck in Wroxham?

The probable answer is a little closer to home.  The RSPB’s ranger, Leanne, said that Bufflehead ducks would be very unlikely to migrate as far as the UK and suggested that it might be an escapee from a private collection.

Having looked more closely at the photograph of the Bufflehead duck there does appear to be a yellow ring around the it’s foot suggesting it is indeed an escapee.  The duck has since disappeared, so we will never know for sure.

The dayboat moorings have also seen a lot of otter activity, with the dayboat team reporting that otters have been trying to prey on both a cygnet and a full-sized swan –  both of which fortunately escaped!

Elsewhere on the yard we had a female otter come into our wet boatshed while the engineers and boatbuilders were at work. And one of our skippers, Oli, also saw an otter pop up just in front of the bows of his boat near Salhouse Little Broad during a river trip.

In other news the Canada goose which we featured nesting on Wroxham Island in the last blog has now hatched some adorable goslings.

Here is the lovely family on a nearby riverside garden.

Finally we will finish the blog with this picture of a swan nesting, taken by one of our skippers Oli at the Ted Ellis Nature reserve in Surlingham.

Written by Oliver Franzen

With so much wildlife around at the moment why not come on a boat trip and see it for yourself?  For more information call 01603 782 207.