Wild Britain: S02E04: Norfolk

This time around Ray is exploring the wildlife of Norfolk, East Anglia. Specifically looking at the environment of a lowland river, looking in, on, and around the River Wensum. 

A handy tip that Ray gives while looking at the river from one of the foot bridges is to take polarising lens glasses so that you can see into the river. Without them the glimmer of reflection of light on the surface of the river block any visibility.

The first creature we look at is the crayfish. The white clawed crayfish is the only crayfish that has adapted to the English rivers, having been native since the end of the ice ages. We need to watch out for the American crayfish, which carry a disease that is a plague for our native crayfish, as well as predating them. If the American crayfish do take over, it’s only a matter of 5 to 10 years before the English crayfish is wiped out. That’s the thing I like about this series, Ray talks to local experts, quite often experts from the Wildlife Trust of the area he is showing us. It really shows that he wants to give us the right knowledge, rather than just getting the information from Wikipedia and regurgitating it for the camera!

We hear that Wensum originates for the word winding. We next look at the plants of the river, from Woody Nightshade to Watercress – the deadly to the edible.

Looking at the little cliff edge of the river, we see Kingfisher nesting sites. Sticklebacks and Minnows would be its’ diet. Settling down into a hide and attempting to call a kingfisher, eventually works. The Kingfisher lands on the stick that Ray noticed mud deposits on, close to the nesting hole.

In part two we start with a traditional flood meadow, mowed by longhorn cattle. The cattle trample the ground, creating a diversity of plants and micro-environments for invertebrates. Southern marsh orchids, yellow rattle, ragged robin, and horsetails, are just a few of the plants that thrive in the flood meadow. This encourages a whole food web of animals. 

Bird netting is next, with Ray talking to people at a nature reserve along the Wensum. Apparently bird netting takes 2 years of training and requires a licence, but is important for understanding diversity and health of the birds along with the year on year rise and fall of numbers. We see that the Marsh Harrier has recently experienced a comeback of sorts. Over the past 10 years, more Marsh Harriers have been seen overwintering along the coast.

One animal that is still under threat is the water vole. Due to the American Mink and declining suitable habitats have lead to this. We have a wonderful sighting of the water vole, but are brought back down to Earth by the fact that over the past 40 years, the population has crashed by 94%. This is where the episode ends, but where our thinking about nature, the outdoors, and how to protect all of our wildlife should begin.