Introducing our new customer bloggers - the TAPS Wildlife Group

We'd like to introduce our new customer bloggers - the TAPS Wildlife Group, who'll be keeping us up to date on the wildlife they see in the grounds of Dereham Community Hub. 

Hello everyone and welcome to our first blog. There are five of us in the team - Helen, Justin, Mark, Tim, and support worker Claire. One of the things we do is a weekly one hour birdwatch, where we count how many types of bird visit our bird table. Our regular visitors are blackbirds, blue tits, great tits, dunnocks, and our favourite - little robins. We also have visits from long tailed tits and greenfinches.

Over the months we’ve seen many of our garden birds nesting and fledging but unfortunately, there’s not been much activity on our bird table this week. This could be due to birds now moulting and because there are more seeds and fruit in the fields and meadows. 

We do have another regular visitor to our bird table. He isn't a feathered friend but a four-legged furry friend with a rather bushy tail - a beautiful grey squirrel, who likes to sneak up and steal the bird food. We don’t mind as he’s so cute!

We have a wildlife camera which we set up daily to see what visits when we’re not here. We’ve had lots of rabbits, birds, some deer, a hedgehog and a sly fox all visit us. It’s been quiet recently but this week we spotted a new visitor, and it’s one we wouldn't have expected to see in our grounds - an oyster catcher. Sometimes three have been appearing in the mornings and early evenings. Claire managed to get a picture of two of them this morning. Oyster catchers are a large black and white wader bird, they’re usually seen around estuaries and beaches, but can be seen in damp fields. They have a shrill piping call, which we had been hearing. We are pleased they choose to visit us!

Well that brings us to the end of our first blog. We hope you've enjoyed it, as much as we do. We’ll be back soon, until then, enjoy the sunshine and watch out for wildlife near you.

Helen, Justin, Mark, Tim and Claire