Wednesday, December 16, 2020

Minsmere October 2020

After a very quiet and rainy week for birds locally, a trip to Minsmere was something I'd been looking forward to for a while! I got the train from Liverpool st at 9am and was at Saxmunham station by 11 where I met Henry who gave me a lift to a heath near Minsmere where we met with David Walsh. After fifteen minutes walking David pointed out a group of Stone Curlew! My first lifer of the day! Despite being distant, we had some good views through David's scope! Also for comparison, there was a regular Curlew wandering across the heath for some reason beyond my inferior human understanding. I'm sure it had some kind of smart curlew reason.... It was great to see the Stone Curlews; such weird birds!

After that David drove us over to another area on the edge of Minsmere or Dunwich and left us to look for Crossbills. I was feeling pretty hopeful and wandered out with Henry hoping to see them all happily perched in the tree. Unfortunately it wasn't that easy! After fifteen minutes wandering the eerily quiet heath, I realized this might be more difficult than I thought! Aside from the occasional Goldcrest there was nothing to see or hear for miles around. A distant Lesser Redpoll calling got me excited for a second until I realized it wasn't a Crossbill. We kept wandering down the path; I hadn't been birding on an actual Heath for a long time and the landscape was a refreshing change from a London park with all it's stunning pinks and purples as well as so many pine trees (another thing I don't get much of down here). Just as I was lost in thought and happily eating my sandwich, the sudden "Jip-Jip" call snapped me out of daze. We both looked up to see two Crossbills bobbing across the horizon and dropping into some distant trees. With my sandwich still in my hand I couldn't get the best views so I was glad when Henry spotted the pair perched in a tree about 80 meters away. We spent a minute watching them before they began to call again and flew over us into some much closer trees. There we had some nice views of the yellow 1st year bird although the bright red male had sadly disappeared out of sight. Another Crossbill went flying over and behind us a Dartford Warbler decided it wanted some attention and began wandering around and calling! All this at once was just amazing! The Crossbills didn't stay long although we were visited by two more fly-overs a minute or two later. A bit more wandering produced two more Dartfords and two fly-over Siskin (one of my other favorite finches along with Bullfinch and Crossbill).

After a successful two hours we made the fairly long walk to Minsmere and arrived an hour or so later. A look around the scrape started off quiet and quickly took a turn for the worse: rain! We sheltered in the hide for a bit watching all my favourite ducks like Pintail and Wigeon until I got bored and suggested we leave being stupid as I am. As with most of my geniusly impulsive ideas it didn't go well and soon we were hiding under a tree in even worse rain. Again, probably not my best decision ever. When the rain eventually lessened a bit after half an hour or so we stopped by the reedbed to try and photograph the Bearded Tits. Despite calling in the reeds for ages we only had a single flight view although I suspect that may slightly be due to the Sparrowhawk which continuously made some incredible hunting passes (although still nothing on one absolutely incredible hunt I witnessed on Parliament hill a few weeks before). Suddenly I heard an odd call and looked up to see 3 Snipe flying overhead. As common as they are, they're one of my favourite birds in the world and any day I see a Snipe is good day seeing as I don't see nearly enough living in Camden. I might even go as far as to say they were my favourite bird I'd seen all day so far... They certainly cheered me up from being soaked to the skin anyway. Finally as we wandering back, we bumped into David again who offered to help find me a Caspian Gull; something I'm much to lazy to try and ID myself and have therefore never seen. While sitting back in the hide I spent some time trying to watch the birds on the opposite side of the water but my binoculars had taken a bit of a beating from the rain and didn't give me much more than blurry shapes in the murky dusk light. I did manage to see one Green Sandpiper wandering about in the dark. Suddenly David exclaimed that he'd found a Long Tailed Duck! I jumped up and frantically tried to find it before remembering my binoculars were useless. I had a look through David's telescope and was amazed to see the beautiful long tailed duck ,fresh out of the artic, bobbing on the muddy water among mallards and teal. Long Tailed Ducks were a bird that had always fascinated me being both an amazing black & white duck from the artic and an incredible sea bird that survives the bleak winters wintering out on the North Sea. Having never seen many sea birds, that added extra wonder to it! We decided to walk around to the other side of the water seeing as the duck was about 200m away. Halfway there, we were distracted by a Barn Owl! We gave it a quick look before heading on to try and refind the duck. By now it was almost dark and I didn't expect to get much of a view of it. However when we arrived at the the east hide we were amazed to see it drifting about meters away from the hide! It was amazing to see such an amazing sea bird so close especially as I'd always expected to see my first as a tiny speck out among the waves. We had some amazing views of it swimming about until it was too dark to see. What a day that had been! We drove back to Henry's house to warm up slightly before I got on the train and had (for once) a smooth and easy train journey home (although a little damp)! 

(On the downside all my A level chemistry & Biology work that I'd brought to do on the train sadly did not survive the rain)

I didn't take many photos that day so I won't bother adding them to this blog. Maybe I'll borrow Henry's & add them later...