Marvellous Minsmere

On Sunday 9th July, Walking down to the Bittern hide, a lady said one was showing and sure enough grabbing a seat in an almost packed hide next to Paul & Jane, I could see the Bittern skulking around the edge of the reeds. At one point it stealthily leaned forward and then I could only describe it as flopping into the water, it caught something and ran back into the cover of the reeds again. After around 45 mins of waiting as if on queue a shout went up at 10.30am and the fine Purple Heron flew east and went down in some reeds half way between this hide and the south hide in the distance. On the way back through the woods, we were shown some Badgers excrement, literally a big dollop! At the car park, we bumped in to Rob H & along the north wall initially after some careful searching we had seen 2 Six- belted Clearwings in flight by the Birds foot trefoil. But when Justin & Chris L came along with some pheromone lure. Our third attempt on the other side of the path (south side) Justin said he had one, a fine Six- belted Clearwing and it posed beautifully on the ground and the the cameras!