Operation Randall

Introduction

As another month passes the weather has seriously turned in the last week or so. The longer days of full sun have certainly brought us some warmth.

As a team this has been appreciated as we have had many outside engagements over the past month most notably last week’s Royal Norfolk Show.

This next month will see our county transformed with many seasonal visitors as schools start to break up for the summer break and people flock to our coastline and stunning rural areas. This brings challenges to policing as the population increases and creates extra pressures on our road networks. The teams across the county will be out and about, providing reassurance and general engagement alongside our core roles of prevention and detection of crime and keeping the county safe. If you see any officers, please do say hello, they will be happy to have a chat.

As always, if you have any questions, concerns or comments on any issues raised throughout this newsletter, please do contact us via email operationrandall@norfolk.police.uk

Wildlife Crime Update

It’s always a good month when I have very little to write in this section, we have had a couple of enquiries around various issues including wild bee orchids, a young dead kestrel and couple of bird nest enquiries. But all these enquiries have quickly been established not to be criminal matters and no need for further police involvement.

In regard to ongoing investigations, we still have a bat roost destruction job ongoing on a development site which is being put together alongside a bird nest destruction job which is also nearing completion.

I am sure many will have seen the male involved in the incident with the Peregrine Falcon on the top of Cromer church who came forward being incredibly sorry for his actions and this was dealt with out of court with a donation to the charity, and a conversation with police around safe use of laser pens (of which there are very few circumstances to be totally honest).

What is happening in the countryside in July?

As we move into July our countryside comes alive in so many ways but if you blink you could miss it. Many of our birds have already had their first clutch of young, with several of our native species possibly already onto the second. Of our visitors, the swallows and house martins will be well into preparing to fledge building up their strength and reserves to fly back to Africa in the not too distant future, you won’t miss their very distinctive noisy chirping if you have them in your barns or house roofs. Many of our birds of prey are well on their way to fledging if they haven’t already.

Much of native wildlife will to be bringing their young out into the wider world, July is often seen as one of the best months to see badgers, the cubs whilst often some of the first young born in the UK in mid-winter will often be seen outside of the sett playing with each other. If you are interested in watching badgers speak to your local badger trust as they may be able to assist with doing this. Please remember it is an offence to cause any harm to badgers and many are on private land, so permission is required – if you do get the chance please keep dogs away at all times, sit quietly and sometimes patience is required but it is usually rewarded.

On the farms it doesn’t stop the next 6-8 weeks are often as busy as it gets. Many livestock farms will still be checking and sometime supplementary feeding stock on a daily basis, grass will be being cut and made into either silage or hay. With the sun out far more recently its mainly being made in to the drier of the products – hay. Another amazing piece of nature showing how it can adapt is the treat of seeing a red kit hover very lower whilst a hay field is being cut or turned, you will not get a better opportunity to get up close and see a red kite hunt in such a fashion in any other way. They have learnt that as its cut and turned the rodents are slightly easier to target. Red Kites are large, majestic bird of prey with incredible hunting instincts easy to spot not only by their colour but their distinct ‘kite’ like tails with triangular shape with pointed outer edges.

Arable farms are gearing up for harvest much of the whole crop has already been harvested this is often cereal crops which are cut before they fully ripen still in green state and put into silage clamps to feed stock generally over the winter months. Whole crop is something that isn’t new but is slowly growing in popularity it isn’t as potentially vulnerable and reliant on the weather to get a successful crop of the land and provides fantastic feed value to livestock.

The rest of the cereal crops are ripening well, couple farmers I spoke to at Norfolk Shows did suggest they wouldn’t want too much heat on it as it will start to put it under stress but otherwise what is present is looking well. Unusually for farmers there was some positive remarks around the timing of recent rains and then the upturn in weather really giving the grains a fuller look.

Of course, the true quality of this season crop won’t be known until the combines enter the fields, yields are being watched closely with the very wet often waterlogged winter we had potentially having a significant impact with almost certainly more spring cereal crops being grown this season than ever before.