Broads transformed into a winter wonderland

Our regular timetable of river trips may have finished for the season but you can see the Broads transformed into a winter wonderland by joining our Festive Mince Pie and Mulled wine cruises (on 8 & 15 December) or hiring a dayboat or heated day cruiser (Monday to Friday, daylight hours, weather permitting) from us.


The Broads become a starkly beautiful wilderness with very little other boat traffic at this time of year.  Better still, this encourages shy wildlife to come out into the open – making it a great time to spot these species as well as overwintering wildfowl.

 

One of our favourite things to watch is a family of Little Grebes living near the downstream entrance to Wroxham Broad.  Little Grebes (known as Dabchicks in Norfolk) are a much smaller relative of the more common Great Crested Grebe.  As they are very shy birds we never see them during the main tourist season but they return to the same spot each year in the winter.

One of our skippers, Oli, explained: “We got our first sighting of Little Grebes in early November.  It’s always a great feeling when you see them again after they have been hiding away all season.

“Throughout November the Little Grebes have been getting braver and increasing in numbers.  We are now spotting groups of at least six Little Grebes fishing in the downstream entrance to Wroxham Broad and the nearby S Bend on the river.”

Another welcome change is a growing number of Coots on Salhouse Broad.  In last month’s blog we reported that, having been almost entirely absent from the area throughout the summer, the first few Coots had returned to the broad (a big relief since their population has crashed in recent years).

The great news is that the population of Coots on Salhouse Broad has continued to grow and there are now dozens of the birds on the broad.  This is especially welcome as the birds have a special place in our hearts because they were immortalised in Arthur Ransome’s Swallows and Amazons book ‘Coot Club’ that was set on the Broads.

We are also pleased that more and more Tufted Ducks are returning to Salhouse Broad.  The deep diving and rather shy ducks migrate to Salhouse Broad each year from Russia, Siberia and other places in northern Europe to avoid the freezing conditions.  They stay with us until the spring and then return home to breed.

Tufted Ducks are also interesting birds to watch.  While the male Tufted Duck looks splendid with black and white plumage and a wonderful tuft on their head, the females are rather drab and lack the tuft all together!

As mentioned in our previous blog the quieter conditions are continuing to encourage two of our passengers’ favourite species – otters and kingfishers – to come out into the open. We are also getting good glimpses of birds of prey including a buzzard flying across the river just in front of our boat, marsh harriers gliding over reedbeds and kestrels hovering over Wroxham Island.

 

To book your place on a festive cruise or for more information on hiring day boats book online. 

Santa Cruises start this Saturday…with a thumbs up from the Man in Red!

Santa’s Pixies have been working hard baking mince pies and preparing the Vintage Broadsman for our sold out Santa Cruises, which start this Saturday.

The pixies have worked their magic transforming our paddle steamer – the Vintage Broadsman – into Santa’s Grotto as well as wrapping up hundreds presents.

You can join our Facebook Competition to guess exactly how many presents were wrapped by Clicking Here


Even more excitingly we managed to take this picture of Santa  when he found a few minutes in his busy schedule to drop by for a final inspection of the Vintage Broadsman – passing the pixies with flying colours!

With Santa’s approval the ever-popular Santa Cruises, which have delighted children for generations, can now start this Sunday.

The one-hour return cruises to Wroxham Broad depart from the Vintage Broadsman’s special Christmas moorings close to Wroxham Bridge, where there is a lovely view of the boat lit up with Christmas lights at night.

During the cruise the Pixies will serve festive cookie and soft drinks to the children and mince pies and mulled wine to the grown-ups.  We’ll sing Christmas songs and there’ll be a festive quiz plus a Christmas colouring and drawing competition.

The real excitement will start when we reach Wroxham Broad where Santa has told us that he will have just enough room to land his sleigh on the roof of the Vintage Broadsman!  Better still Santa will hand an extra special gift to every child (aged 1-15)!

With a busy schedule of SOLD OUT trips running up to three times per day up to Christmas Eve we are really excited about sharing the festive fun with hundreds of children and their families!

There’s also something for grown-ups to enjoy, with availability remaining on our popular Norfolk Broads festive cruises.

We’re always excited to share previous Santa Cruise experiences, so be sure to post your images and stories with #santacruisememories so that our team get to see them!

For more information call 01603 782207.

Look out for Otters and Kingfishers this Autumn

With Autumn upon us the Broads is being transformed from a hub of holiday activity to a colourful oasis for wildlife.  We are being rewarded with some fantastic nature spotting, so with our daily boat trips continuing until 31 October come and see for yourself! 

A case in point is a recent boat trip with skipper Oli, whose passengers were lucky enough to spot “The Holy Trinity” of an otter, a kingfisher and a marsh harrier all on the same boat trip. The tour aboard the Queen of the Broads was on one of the wettest days of the year, but this meant that the rivers were much quieter and the wildlife came out into the open (while the passengers stayed dry inside our heated trip boat.)

Oli said: “Our passengers really reaped the rewards of coming out on a rainy day.  First of all we got close to a kingfisher sitting on a tree by the entrance to Salhouse Little Broad.  We managed to quietly creep up to the kingfisher, which usually fly off very quickly, but this one remained on the branch due to the rivers being quiet – so everyone got a great view.

“Next we turned on to Salhouse Broad where large numbers of greylag geese had gathered in open water.  They suddenly flew up in the air fleeing a female otter that had swum out into the middle of the broad to ambush them.  Failing to catch a goose the otter had to swim for a couple of minutes back to the bankside vegetation and our passengers enjoyed a privileged view of it crossing the open water.

“To complete the ‘Trinity’ we enjoyed another fantastic sighting of a marsh harrier which crossed the river right in front of our boat on Woodbastick Reach, which is a hotspot for these birds because of the reedbeds nearby.”

Not to be outdone skipper Roy also enjoyed a “Red Letter Day” last week spotting several otters in the same day, as well as some great sightings of kingfishers plus herons seemingly around every bend.

While you have to be lucky to spot an otter or kingfisher at any time of year, now is one of the best times to try.  A hotspot for both species is close to the entrance to Salhouse Little Broad – so keep your eyes peeled in this area if you join us for a trip!

On the subject of unusual wildlife, we spotted a grass snake swimming across the river toward our boat at the downstream end of Wroxham village.

Another interesting sight at this time of year is cormorants working together to herd fish into the corners of broads and river banks and then feasting on them once trapped.  In the summer months cormorants tend to hunt fish alone, but in the autumn and winter the numbers of these birds coming inland from the coast not only swell but they often change their behaviour by grouping up and working together to hunt.

We are pleased to report the return of a handful of coots to Salhouse Broad, which have been almost entirely absent from the area all summer.  As a regular customer put it “Salhouse Broads used to be like Coot City ten years ago but now we are lucky to see one.”  While the reason for their population crash remains uncertain, it’s at least reassuring to see a few coots back on the broad.

Great Crested Grebes are doing far better on Salhouse Broad.  We spent the spring watching around half a dozen pairs building floating nests around the edge of the broad and raising their young, which we are delighted to say have survived very well.

The young grebes are now about the same size as their parents but a little greyer in colour.  The birds have now ‘flown the nest’ and are making their own way in life, hanging around in groups of “adolescents” a bit like teenagers in a park!

Finally we are being treated to a blaze of colour on the riverbanks – with flowering reed heads turning purple,  the mild pink of hemp-agrimony and the deep red of rose hips.  We will leave you with this picture – look carefully and you can spot a heron flying and cormorants up a tree.

Boogie on the Broads shares good vibes with charities!

Party goers have had the time of their life aboard Broads Tours’ Boogie on the Broads disco cruises this summer.  As a thank you to all who have made the evenings so successful Compact Disco and Broads Tours have made charitable donations to Alzheimer’s Research UK and local hospice Priscilla Bacon Lodge.

Discussing the legendary music cruises, which have been held for many years throughout July and August, Broads Tours’ Barbara Greasley said: “Hundreds of people have had a wonderful time dancing on our disco music cruises this summer with other holiday makers waving and joining in the dancing from the moored cruisers and waterside cottages.”

The events DJ’s Mike and Ben Goulder, from Compact Disco, wanted to share this good vibe by donating money to charity and Broads Tours were delighted to match fund them.  Two hundred pounds have been donated to Alzheimer’s Research UK with a further £200 being donated to local hospice, Priscilla Bacon Lodge.

Barbara added “Donating to these two charities that are both very dear to all of our hearts, seemed like the right thing to do after such a successful and fun filled season of Boogie on the Broads cruises”.

 

The final word on the Boogie Season must go to trip advisor reviewer, tcauUKVulcan, from Mundesley who, like dozens of other avid Boogiers, left us a lovely review writing:
“Had an amazing evening trip from Wroxham on the boogie night boat. We were a group of mostly 60-80 year old teenagers and all had a great time. The crew were super and the excellent DJ made sure the music was right for us. Couldn’t believe how the people on the boats we passed waved and joined in with the dancing! Weather was just right. Overall a magical evening.”

 

New arrivals delight passengers

Our water birds’ hard work nestbuilding and egg laying has started to come into fruition with the first of their young now being hatched – and passengers are swooning over their adorable offspring.

A favourite sight is two sets of newly hatched Great Crested Grebes being carried on their parent’s back’s on Salhouse Broad to keep them warm and protect them from predators.

Several pairs of grebes started building floating nests around the edges of the broad for their clutches of two to three eggs last month. After a month of incubation, the first two pairs to nest have been rewarded with two ‘greblets’ each.

Interestingly each parent has a ‘favourite’ offspring so the male is starting to teach one particular youngster to swim and dive while the female will teach the other ‘greblet’.   We managed to capture the moment that a male grebe fed his favourite ‘greblet’ a fish, who was swimming in the water while the sibling remained on mum’s back.

We are still enjoying spotting other grebes that are later in nesting around the edge of the broad.  Grebes can be quite fussy about building the perfect ‘family home’ which can easily be washed away by speeding boats, high tides or trampled by geese.  As a result it can sometime take several attempts before they get it right, meaning we will have ‘greblets’ hatching right into the summer.

Another adorable sight is newly hatched cygnets being led around by their proud and protective parents.  Our first cygnets hatched in Wroxham village about two weeks ago while a second family was hatched only a few days ago from our pair of swans nesting on Wroxham island.

We have another pair of swans still nesting on Wroxham Broad, which will hopefully have their own young soon.

The waterways are alive with goslings of all shapes and sizes.  By far the most common are the Greylags but the Canada Goose goslings also started hatching a week ago.  Interestingly, this was about a month after the first Greylags hatched, showing the differences between the two species.

We are regularly watching Common Terns performing their aerial acrobatics while fishing over Wroxham and Salhouse Broad. Unfortunately though, the birds (which migrate all the way from Africa each year) are showing little sign of breeding on their special nesting platform on Hoveton Great Broad for the second year running.

Of course our river trips are about more than young birds, with many rarer species being spotted recently too including otters, marsh harriers, buzzards, kestrels and kingfishers.