Sunday 27 June 2021

Star birds do a bunk & saturation point at Minsmere?

Arriving at Minsmere on Sunday 27th June, later than scheduled at 10.30am. I walked over to the west side of the scrape & seeing Nick & his wife first he advised me to walk further than the south hide to look for the Roseates, I keep missing them at Minsmere over the last 10 years, (last one seen Minsmere 2011, last one seen Lowestoft North beach 2012, courtesy of Andrew) they've usually either not there or just flown out to sea. Would today be any different? Probably not! I walked around the west part of the scrape first seeing a fine Green Sandpiper from the West hide, walking along the side of channel ridge of a pool although a child running around the hide didn't lead to a mindfulness moment. Lots of Black- tailed Godwits seen too. I walked over to south hide, saw 2 Little Terns on the island in front and more Common Terns but no sign of any Roseates and I then walked slightly further south as Nick directed and just past a little bridge I had to wait for a non birding couple to vacate the spot I wanted to look out over the southern section of the scrape. I scanned for 45 minutes, there were lots of Common Terns, along the southern section around 100 Sandwich Terns seen too and around 30 adult Kittiwakes on an island. On a small island in front were a Little Tern and 2 winter plumaged grey Knot. Ringed Plover seen too. No sign of the Roseate. I also looked from the public hide and I could see a lone fine dusky Spotted Redshank just right of the post no.6 on the edge of an island and over the northern side of the East Scrape a wonderful tally of 14 dusky fully summer plumaged Spotted Redshanks, (with the extra singleton, 15 in total, a sight to behold, I was hoping they'd stay there when I arrived at the East Scrape hide but they had dispersed and around 5 seen dotted around the northern fringes of the Scrape here. On the bench step, 2 close Sandwich Terns and 3 adult Kittiwakes perched but flew before I could set the camera up. It was too windy for any Dartford's on the dunes (still need to see one for 2021) but I was delighted to pick up a fine tiny Green Tiger Beetle by the base of the Sand Martin cliffs just over the line of the electric fence, it favoured a white peeble. An interested couple came over and I showed then the beetle. Tiny and green with white spots on each wing and buffy near the thorax sadly I didn't have my macro lens camera as it was pretty close and would have made a good pic. Overall, there was a lot of people at Minsmere, mostly young families, it is good to get children into nature to carry on the "torch" but a young family were having a picnic where I had seen Adders in previous years and surely the sheer numbers of people is causing dune erosion and disturbance to sensitive species. It was good too to see reserve staff showing a young family a Bee Wolf colony and explaining their life style to their enthralled audience. I even saw someone walking their dog on the reserve it was on a lead but I thought dogs were banned from the reserve??? Although a large part of the beach was roped off and I am pleased to say a considerable part of the bushes between the hides was roped off too. Particularly galling to hear the Roseate was back on the south scrape this afternoon. It wasn't on there this morning.

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