Sunday was too nice a day to spend indoors, so in the afternoon I wrapped up warm and walked round the reserve. Lots of other people had the same idea and the car park was almost full, but the advantage of the circular trail is that you don't see many people as long as you all walk in the same direction at the same pace.
Redwing by Chris Gomersall (rspb-images.com)
The hawthorn bushes were alive with redwings, but they seemed very nervous and flighty. The reason for this was suddenly apparent, as a sparrowhawk shot across the path in front of me and scattered a dozen from one bush. I didn't see if it had made a kill. This was one of five sightings of sparrowhawks during the afternoon, of at least two different birds. There were also some fieldfares, but fewer than their smaller relatives.
I gradually made my way anticlockwise past the stream and the grazed fields, spotting thrushes at every turn and a flock of 14 siskins in the alders, and thence to Reedbed Hide. Here half a dozen birders had settled in with cameras, flasks and sandwiches, hoping to see several birds that had been reported recently. Thankfully Reedbed Hide is big enough to accommodate the casual bird watchers as well as the enthusiasts, and nobody with the patience to wait was disappointed.
Male Merlin by Chris Gomersall (rspb-images.com)
Initially there wasn't much to see. A solitary heron worked its way around the ice-free margins of the mere, and a fox walked slowly along the edge of a ditch before branching off into the reedbed, but the real action was concentrated in the last half hour of daylight. Suddenly one of the birders called 'merlin', and we were treated to five minutes of high-speed aerobatics as the tiny male hurtled over the reeds and bushes hoping to surprise one of the many reed buntings that had been dropping in to roost. We didn't witness any success, and after several passes he dashed off to search elsewhere, which was obviously an advantage to several hundred starlings that arrived to check out potential roost sites. Then we became aware of a dark sinister shape half running, half skating across the ice - a mink, leaving one of the side ditches and crossing to the islands in the middle of the mere. Having had a good look round, it returned to the reedy margin and continued its search along the edge of the mere and into another side ditch. A few minutes later, an ungainly brown shape launched itself into the air from the same general area, and flew across the mere to drop into another reedy ditch on the other side - a bittern! This was presumably the same bird that had been seen a couple of days ago, and the main target for the patient birders. Then to round off the display, a barn owl appeared in the half light and glided silently over one of the tracks and into the night.
Barn owl by John Bridges (rspb-images.com)
Those were the highlights of my afternoon, but of course there were other birds around too. Earlier in the day, two bearded tits had been seen well enough to be photographed near Reedbed Hide; although we could occasionally hear them, they were deep out of sight in the reeds. Snipe, jay, and great spotted woodpecker flew over at various times; a Cetti's warbler sang briefly; and a flock of long-tailed tits worked their way noisily through the bushes by the hide. Fowlmere is a good place to be on a sunny winter's afternoon.
A chilly Fowlmere through a hide window by Nigel Russell