October, caprice and unpredictable, can be a month of reflective tranquillity or rousing splendour. It is certainly the month of blustery storms, with cold fronts doing battle with warm air. Norfolk’s shoreline can be battered by immense bowling waves, having been drawn up by low pressure then excited by high winds. This October we have had one named storm - ‘Amy’ - and at the time of writing ‘Benjamin’ is on its way. If there seems to be a disproportionate number of Irish Gaelic names, this is because the Republic of Ireland Meteorological Office names the storms if they come in from the West. Of course, nearly all our storms come in from that direction. Autumn storms are nature’s great disrupters, and it is just what nature needs after a hot summer. Trees, still sailed with red and amber leaves, fight to stay rooted, with many an over-stretched silver birch losing the battle. The veteran oaks shrug disdainfully and discard a limb or two. An unimaginable trillion seeds are scattered far and wide, beneficiaries of the tempest’s anger. As the weather settles, ‘twitchers’ will search out stray migrant birds, flung off passage and far from their intended winter quarters.

For obvious reasons, we close our reserves prior to a storm warning taking affect. After a storm, it is the first job of staff and volunteers to check livestock and infrastructure for damage. The usual task is to clear fallen trees from the paths. The ring of a distant chainsaw is a familiar post-storm sound across our reserves. Although, this is nothing compared to the massive effect storms can have on our coastal reserves, with even life-threatening consequences. If low pressure and a high tide join with an easterly driven storm, the low-lying coastal reserves can be devastated by a storm surge, covering vast areas under several metres of seawater. In my time with Norfolk Wildlife Trust, the ‘Broads Team’ has been dispatched to NWT Cley Marshes twice to help with clear-up and repair. The storm surge over the 5th and 6th December 2013 was particularly destructive. The shingle ridge was torn apart and over a metre of water sat on the coast road. The warden, Bernard Bishop, had the North Sea lapping at his front door! The clear-up was some job, with garden furniture from the village wedged into hides, boardwalks lifted and tossed away, thick dark silt everywhere and wildlife habitats seriously damaged. But it recovered, and the improvement and realignment of the ‘New Cut’ drainage dyke, which was completed in 2023, will help future-proof the reserve. It won’t stop the sea coming in, but it will certainly ensure that it drains off as quickly as possible.  

Anyone visiting Cley in recent weeks may have spotted a machine that would look more at home in an episode of Thunderbirds than on a nature reserve. An amphibious reed-cutting vehicle called a ‘Truxor’ has been put to work and can get into all those hard-to-reach parts of the reedbed. The equipment cost more than £120,000, of which 60% was funded with a grant from the Farming in Protected Landscapes (FiPL) Programme, administered by the Norfolk Coast Protected Landscape on behalf of Defra. The remainder was funded by a deeply generous legacy gift from NWT member Peter Sinclair. Mr Sinclair died at the age of 73 in 2020, after contracting Covid-19. His legacy gift will support the future conservation of NWT Cley and Salthouse Marshes and other reserves. George Baldock, our Coastal Reserves Manager said: ‘The lightweight amphibious machine has tracks with paddles on them. It will drive from a firm surface onto a boggy marsh, or it will float on open water, so we can get to areas we could not previously get to’.

Away from the coast, NWT Weeting Heath Warden James Symonds in the Brecklands has been rotovating strips in Langmere. The very rare ribbon-leaved water plantain was discovered there in the 1960s, although surveys post 2000 have yielded nothing. James stated that: ‘This is a plant of high conservation concern in the UK with only a few remaining known sites’. If conditions are right, it is a likely focus for a Natural England translocation project in the coming years. Although James is clear that ‘It is important to see if we can resurrect it from any possible seedbank that may still exist in the mere first. We’ve rotovated strips through the mere to disturb the soil and expose some of the seedbank’. So now it is a case of wait and see what happens in the summer. Between appearances on TV to talk about stone curlew, James has been, with consent from Natural England and the support of Plantlife, collecting Spanish catchfly Silene otites seeds. In the UK, this exceptionally rare plant is confined to only a few sites in the Norfolk and Suffolk Brecks. The seeds were sent to Kew Gardens’ Millenium Seed Bank for sorting and cleaning, with some being stored for future use. 1,500 were returned to James for planting out on Harling Heath as part of the reintroduction work there. James said ‘As very little information has been recorded about the methodology of previous Spanish catchfly translocations, this work will provide an opportunity for some science. We will be introducing 1,500 greenhouse grown plugs too, and these will be ready in a couple of weeks’. The experimental design of the introduction will allow NWT staff to see which methods work best, and this will help inform any future reintroduction schemes.

Take action
November is the time hedgehogs start looking for somewhere to hibernate, they may use an old rabbit burrow or drag dry leaves and hay under a garden shed or into a pile of brushwood. Many of us burn hedge and tree cuttings from the garden this time of year, and of course, Guy Fawkes celebrations are a potential hazard for hedgehogs seeking a pile of old wood to hide in. At this time of year, do check for hedgehogs and other wildlife before lighting any bonfires or strimming in long vegetation.

What to look for in November
Depending on the severity of continental weather, lapwings will be arriving from Scandinavia and Germany in increasing numbers during November. They will be out in flocks (known as a ‘walk’ or ‘deceit’) on fields of winter barley and grazing marshes, even large playing-fields. They often feed by moonlight as during the day they are marked, like an Italian central-defender, by black-headed gulls. The gulls stand ever watchful, ready to chase and snatch any worm or beetle the lapwings may find.