Suffolk - The Rest!

We of course went up to Dunwich Heath looking for Dartford Warbler, and were rewarded with a few sightings, not very close but good views through the bins. It was a hot day and so photography was made even more difficult, when the camera decided to take a photo that is, so a very poor record shot only.

Otherwise it was pretty quite on the heath, a few Stonechat about, then a nice Whitethroat singing in the gorse,

and a very confiding young rabbit, came to see us while we had an ice cream, puchased from the National Trust Cafe.

Other places visited were Dursham Marshes, Dunwich Forest, Dunwich Beach and Hen Reedbeds.

I'll start with Dursham Marshes, this is a lovely Suffolk Wildlife Trust reserve, with a nice circular walk. Plenty of Butterflies, a bit quiet on the birding front, but we did get a fly over of a Hen Harrier, so that was brilliant. After suffering a further mishap with the camera no photo of the Hen Harrier or any of the other birds seen.

Dunwich Beach was lovely, we sat on one of the sea facing benches and had a very late lunch, seeing Avocet, Sandwich Tern, Gulls and Oystercatcher flying along the shoreline. We decided not to go for a long walk up Dingle Marshes as it was getting late in the afternoon, we did get some good views of a Kestrel though and Skylark, we returned to the benches with an Ice Cream and found a Common Scoter floating around offshore.

Now to Dunwich Forest (not the same day!) I had read on the RSPB website that there is a hide overlooking Dingle Marshes accessible from the Forestry commission car parks, So we went for this one of the mornings. It was along walk on a hot day... The forestry maps gave no indication of the distance, but we went for it. Despite the paths being quite open for the most part we saw very little, just a distant Muntjac on the track ahead,

plenty of Butterflies again,

yes the camera decided to work this time!

We eventually found the hide, it would be easy to miss off the track as it isn't sign posted, so we went in and were very disappointed. The view was over a small reed bed, to some trees. So the view was actually non-existant! We had a very brief view of a Marsh Harrier as it came over the hide and went over the trees ahead, so that lasted about 2 seconds. We stayed for a coffee, of course, and saw not a single bird in the time we were there. So then it was the long trek back, only seeing a Jay on the way. We won't be going back.

So that leaves us with Hen Reedbeds near Wangford. This a marvellous reserve, in two parts. From the car park is a platform about 100 yards away maximum, overlooking the reed beds. There was plenty of activity. Hobby, Lapwing, Marsh Harrier, Bearded Tit, Sedge and Reed Warbler, Reed Bunting. We called in here a couple of times on the way back to our digs, for a later afternoon cuppa.
This one of the resident Lapwings.

The last day of our stay we explored the Hen Reedbeds further, leaving the car park via a path under an archway, you pop out back on the road, cross to the path on the other side, then enter the reserve again, walking along a dyke, to a viewing platform overlooking more reed beds to your left, and with the river viewable from the dyke to your right. Following the dyke our now accessible lower path, you can carry on to two hides again overlooking the reed beds, with steps at each back up onto the dyke to view the river and estuary.

From the first hide on our first visit Redshank, Shelduck, Lapwing, Mute Swan, Mallard and a little egret were seen. We had coffee of course before continuing to the second hide, not much was seen from here on the first visit. The third hide was visible over the other side of the reed beds, so carried on to this along a recently mown track, this made walking a bit more arduous as the cuttings were fairly deep.

We had lunch at hide number three, with good views of Marsh Harrier, but again little else.
On the walk nack to hide no. 2. We heard a Cuckoo and had a brief sighting as it flew off to our left. We dropped into hide 2 again as the Marsh harrier had been very active.

We were watching quite a bit of Warbler activity when a Cuckoo landed on a wire about 80 yards from us, that ran over the reed beds, it stayed a while, watching one Sedge Warbler in particular, the Cuckoo then dropped down onto some bramble about 10 yards from where the Sedge Warbler was constantly visiting. The cuckoo the waited until the warbler departed and it dropped down onto what we can only assume was the nest. So putting two and two together we can only assume that the cuckoo was leaving a present of an egg behind. Wildlife in action...... brilliant!

We finally stopped in hide one again for tea! To be treated to a Water rail putting in an appearance, just sad that my camera didn't fire!
These are the only pictures that I manged that day.
Reed Bunting

 and Poppies!

So I think that is it. A great week was had, apart from Dunwich Forest, but you live and learn.

Our first visit to Suffolk & RSPB Minsmere

We have a policy at the moment that time is short and we shouldn't visit places over and over again, even though we love them! So Mull and Northumberland have missed out this year, sorry! So we have now made our first venture into Suffolk. We chose Aldeburgh on the coast to stay and what a great place only 20 minutes or so from a many splendid places to see wildlife. However we ended up going to RSPB Minsmere every day that we were there, it is such a fantastic site.

I will leave the chaps and wench (showing my Black Country roots there!) from Springwatch on the Beeb to give you the detail, but I have to say it is possibly the best reserve for diversity (not the dance group) that we have ever been to. Although when we booked our week we didn't realise it was the week before Springwatch, just glad it wasn't the actual week. The production team were there though laying cable and filming snippets for the programme I'm glad to say that they didn't detract from the experience, apart from one occasion, when we in the woods (Canopy Hide) and the noise from the production crew and an over excited Martin Hughes-Games made us realise we weren't going to see much from there!

As we headed back, we were walking alongside one of the production crew and mentioned the noise, he admitted that he keeps telling them to keep the noise down to no avail and anyway he said I'm the one who knows about wildlife, they are just paid to talk about it! That made us laugh.

Anyway on to the Wildlife, much more important...............................

I won't go over this day by day, but cover the highlights:

So I have to start off with the main reason for going to Minsmere, Bearded Tits, we have tried on many occasions at other reserves to connect with this little *******! So we thought Minsmere was our best bet and we did on every visit, of course when they are hopping about the reeds they are not easy to get a photo of but I tried my best, here are some attempts:

So add 1 to our list of species.
Another target was to get some good Bittern sightings in the UK, we realised that nothing would compare to the close up views we had in Lesvos, but we didn't do to badly:

Before Minsmere on one of the mornings we decided to call in to Dunwich Heath (National Trust) which is just north of Minsmere, in fact you can if so inclined and have time walk from one to the other but we chose to drive, we were doing enough walking over the week. The Heath is a beautiful place covered in heather and gorse and is of course home to the Dartford Warbler hence the real reason for the visit and again we weren't disappointed, however photographing the said bird was another matter, we did get close on a couple of occasions, the birds came to us, I hasten to add, but always to quick to photograph, or I'm just getting old and aren't quick enough! I did get some distant shots spoiled by the heat haze, but for the record:

So that was new species number 2. As well as these we did catch up with some other birds not seen (by us) very often. A Red-necked Phalarope that caused a few twitchers to emerge from their hibernation, although the view we had was a barely distinguishable bird through our scope. A magnificent summer plumage Grey Plover was also very welcome, along with a 1st year Little Gull. No photos to offer on any of those I'm afraid unless you want to see a few fuzzy blobs!

Another great sighting for us were the Hobbys. We had seen them before but usually a quick view as they fly past and are gone, here there were loads and we saw them regularly and were even lucky to get one posing in a tree not too far from the hide we were in:

Of course another great bird to see at a reed bed reserve is the Marsh Harrier and at Minsmere they show very well, but again not as close as you would like for the camera:

As you may have seen this week on Springwatch, Kittiwake nest on a platform just offshore near the Sizewell Nuclear Power Station and they come to Minsmere to gather nesting material and have the odd argument:

Another great sight were the large groups of Black-tailed Godwit early in the week:

there were the odd Bar-tailed as well which was nice.
Another first was watching a Great-crested Grebe weed dance from the Island Mere Hide a real treat, shame they were a distance away:

Moving off the avian wildlife there were a few other things worth mentioning, Red Deer, Muntjac:

Rabbit:

and saving the best to last, Adder:

Right back to our feathered friends....
Of course there was plenty of other birds about;
Redshank:

 Swallow:

 Grey Heron:

 Green Woodpecker:

 Reed Warbler:

 Chaffinch:

 Shelduck:

 Common Tern:

 Mute Swan:

 Gadwall:

 Whitethroat:

 Magpie:

 Little Egret:

 Lapwing:

 Reed Bunting:

 Cormorant:

So sadly time to leave, but not without a small detour to Lakenheath on the way home. When we arrived the volunteers asked us if we had come to see the Little Bittern, the answer was no! But these people obviously had:

We spoke to one or two of the people and they had been there a couple of hours without a sighting although we did hear it whilst talking to them, as we had seen plenty in Lesvos, we decided not to linger and left them to it. Our reward for that was a decent Cuckoo sighting, we had seen one at Minsmere but only a flypast, whereas this one rested a while albeit in the woods so it was pretty dull:

But the real reason for stopping at Lakenheath was this:

our first ever sightings of Crane, again after many attempts in Norfolk, Suffolk has delivered the goods! So that's it for this post. 3 New species added not too shabby!

TTFN!