At the time of writing, September has passed without any unusual weather: some sunshine, some wind and some rain. The early part of the month saw assertive north-easterly winds blow in. If, as happened, they suddenly drop-off to allow an early morning sea fret to form, it can result in a ‘fall’ of migrant birds, and the North Norfolk coast is renowned for these events. The coastal bushes and scrubs at NWT Holme Dunes can be festooned with unusual birds, an avian Christmas tree bedecked with all manner of warblers, pied flycatchers and black redstarts. Holme alone (pun intended) counted a number of continental imports this September, including icterine warbler, greenish warbler, yellow-browed warbler, red-breasted flycatcher and wryneck.

Sea-watching can be equally fruitful with the various sea duck species and the likes of shearwater pushed close to the shore by the wind. I recall, some years ago, after a storm had blown through from the north-east, finding a little auk swimming around in a gravel pit at Snettisham. These birds breed in the high Arctic and spend the winter far out at sea. This little penguin like bird, paddling around in its tiny dinner jacket, was no doubt doomed. After stormy weather individuals have been found, lost and lonely, on inland marshes mixed with flocks of starling.  

October is when rarity hunting birdwatchers really start to twitch. Any manner of unusual migrant birds – from as far as Siberia or North America – can turn up, and like a Martini cocktail, anytime, anyplace, anywhere. The internet has allowed information on rarities and their location to travel fast and a ‘mega’ can find hundreds of birdwatchers descend within hours. Of course, prior to text and WhatsApp, there were pagers, and in the eighties – birdwatching phonelines. Those of us of vintage recall having to rely on our bird news from the noticeboard in the old café at the end of the beach road at Cley. 

The same weather conditions can find migrant moths arriving in large numbers too, with many of the rare hawkmoths being impressive in both size and colour. Highly migratory animals such as birds and moths are really strong indicates of changing environmental factors such as climate change. Increases over the last few decades of some species is often an indication of drifting distribution, rather than an increase in population or expansion of range. James Symonds, NWT Weeting Heath Warden, monitors moth populations on the reserve. This September he caught a rare immigrant moth, many-lined Costaconvexa polygrammata. “This was formerly a rare native moth in the UK, known only from the Cambridgeshire fens” Although James thinks it may be returning: “this year has been a particularly good year for the species reaching these shores, and with their caterpillars feeding on bedstraw there’s no reason to think they couldn’t be recolonising”. Although numbers may be increasing, it was a good catch for James, and stands as only the 9^th record for Norfolk.

It’s not just insects and birds that migrate. At Trinity Broads, the NWT warden Eilish Rothney was on hand to help with the trapping and ringing of Nathusius' pipistrelle bats. This on-going project is to find out more about this cousin of the common and soprano pipistrelles. The Nathusius' bat seems to have a rather complicated lifestyle with some choosing to summer in the UK, often within Soprano maternity roosts, others appear to migrate here in autumn, crossing the North Sea from Scandinavia and Eastern Europe. It was first recorded in the Shetland Islands in the 1940s, and was considered a rare vagrant, it was ‘up-graded’ to winter visiting migrant as records of the bat increased. Since the 1990s breeding Nathusius' bats have been found in England and Northern Ireland. Compared to our other bat species, little is known about their habits, making this project work vital in understanding their needs.

Top tips for October

Fungi! This is the best month to spot fungi in all shapes and sizes; from the magnificent chicken of the woods – a bracket fungus found growing on tree trunks – to the always impressive red, white-spotted fly agaric. We’d recommend taking a good mushroom guide, or downloading an app such as iNaturalist to identify your finds.

Best bets for good sightings are NWT Bretts Wood and Foxley Wood, or NWT Holme Dunes for grassland species. Older cemeteries are often fruitful places too.

Important to note – do not consume any mushrooms you find! Not only are many mushrooms poisonous when consumed, but it is also a legal offence to remove plants or fungi from nature reserves without prior permission.