A good day at Minsmere

Today I drove to Minsmere hoping the goodies that had been there most of the week would stay. The Wryneck was seen straight away at the North bushes feeding by a patch of bell heather at the back of the grassy area. A Redstart was also seen perched in a small tree here too.

Walking east down the path, just past the bend we looked south and saw the excellent immature Red- backed Shrike perched in a small triangular bush, it did several flying sorties and later on caught a beetle and flew back to the bush to devour it.

Walking along the beach, I saw 3 Whimbrel and a Bar- tailed Godwit flying south just south of the Public hide, I saw Matthew D photographing something and walking slowly and carefully up to him, he pointed out the 2 Lapland Buntings just in front of him barely 15 feet away! This is the sort of birding I really like; walking up to the birds seeing them instantly and even getting close to some for a chance of a spot of photography. 

The birds were feeding around some small sea Cabbage and I was able to obtain several shots as the birds were most confiding, as is sometimes the case with this species.

walking to the sluice bushes, surely the Barred wouldn't be this easy? It wasn't.

After an hour looking, in the pleasant company of Chris M & Peter N, we didn't see it and I joined Roy H and his wife as we had a look within the Sluice bushes again no luck, but as Roy played a recording of the Barred warbler song at the back of the sluice bushes, we caught a glimpse of a large warbler (I didn't get any colouration or plumage on it) which flew over and into the bush just south of where we were needless to say we didn't see it again, it may have been the Barred Warbler?

My luck was running out, as a look on the east Scrape following a male Sparrowhawk whizzing through low and heading in a north- westerly direction "spooked" the birds and I failed to spot the Little Stint that had been showing earlier although we did see Avocet, 2 Common sandpiper and 4 winter- plumaged Knot that flew south. A walk back enabled us to see the Red- backed Shrike again and the Wryneck from the concessionary path running though the North bushes where I also saw a very tame pheasant, Rabbit, Speckled Wood and a Lesser Whitethroat.

In the garden late afternoon we heard and saw 2 Chiff- Chaffs, a female Common Darter rested on a towel on the washing line and later in the evening a Migrant Hawker briefly whizzed around the garden.