Our new visitors to the Etton Maxey Nature Reserve – a herd of Belted Galloway cattle – have been attracting a lot of camera attention from nature-watchers during March.
So we have chosen this photo of one of them, taking a rest from the job of grazing the pastures, as our image of the month.
With the end of the Covid lockdown in sight, bringing with it the opening of shops and hairdressers, most of us can sympathise with this lady’s fringe being a bit long! The photo was taken by Angela Trotter.
Each month we select photographs taken by our Facebook members and posted on our site. They might not be technically perfect – but they sum up the events of that month. Here are some other images from March 2021. You can click on them to enhance your viewing.
Other animals attracting attention from our visitors include this Mantjac deer caught on the reserve by Julie Budnik-Hillier.
Julie also took these shots:
The signs of Spring have gained momentum as the month has progressed. Mike Horne came across this frogspawn at Swaddywell Pit on March 25. As Langdyke”s frog export he’s always on the lookout for signs
He explained: “I’ve been walking around Swaddywell with my trusty torch on a few nights each Spring for the last six or seven years, on the lookout for amphibians.
“I was delighted to see our first ever clump of frogspawn in one of the ponds! So we now have Common frogs, Smooth newts and Great Crested newts at Swaddywell. The frogspawn was laid in one of the warmer, shallower ponds, and – as you can see from the photo, the (very small!) tadpoles are now just starting to emerge, so I’d expect that it was laid around a couple of weeks ago.
“If they can keep away from all of the the hungry newts and Great Diving Beetle larvae until they metamorphose into tiny froglets in about twelve weeks time, they’ll be back in three years to lay some spawn of their own.”
Another sign is, or course, the appearance of colour as flowers start to shoot into life. This photo at Swaddywell was by Sue Welch
Here are some more images that sum up the month:
