After a successful morning with the Wood Larks we had a couple of hours spare so time to call into Lakenheath Fen. The trails are now open but the visitor centre and toilets remain closed. During the lock-down when there were no people around a Marsh Harrier decided to nest right next to the main trail and therefore this trail is closed and Joist Fen can only be accessed via the river bank. This didn't affect us as we wouldn't have time to walk the full length of the reserve.
Apparently a Grasshopper Warbler was singing and had been seen a few times so it was decided to make that our target species for the small amount of time that we had available. While we were waiting for the Grasshopper Warbler to start singing and to give us a clue to its position we had time to photograph some of the Sedge Warblers in the reed bed. The top two photos are of one of the adults.
The youngsters have a much warmer plumage and are already adept at clinging to reeds.
At that point the Grasshopper Warbler started reeling and was visible, but unfortunately had chosen to sing from the middle of a Phragmites bed. This made life difficult although I did eventually find a tunnel through the reeds. Because of the several feet of reeds that I had to get through automatic focusing was out of the question and manual focus had to be employed which is not easy on a distant brown bird on a dull day.
Actually not too bad considering the conditions and I look forward to coming back for the day when the reserve is fully open.
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