Guest blog by Mark Solomons, Minsmere volunteer and resident
It is exactly a year since we moved to this part part of the world and what a different world it is to the one we left behind on the outskirts of London. Of course, we're just discovering what thousands already know. There is nothing quite like nature to take you out of yourself, particularly in the current times when the need to escape has never been greater. Our arrival was heralded with the bellowing of red deer stags across Westleton Heath, the night skies were a canvas of stars rather than the dull glow from a thousand homes while there was a strange aroma which we eventually worked out was what fresh air smelt like.
Now, a year on, we are once more serenaded by the throaty roars of the stags from all sides. Our new life has a new soundtrack, a mix tape of songs and shouts, booms and buzzing from a myriad of creatures. Previously I tended to judge the changing of the seasons on quite obvious signals - the colour of the leaves, the weather, the beginning and end of the football season, the first TV ads for Christmas that appeared late October. But now I have a more bucolic barometer. The booming of bitterns, the continuous buzz of bees, the juvenile cuckoo that hung around our back fence for a few weeks, the adders that turned up, bred then disappeared again and the nesting shelducks in a nearby field who walked their brood past our gate to the nearest pond.
Juvenile cuckoo in the garden This has been the most unusual of years in so many ways but nature reminds us that some things don't change. Our glorious isolation in this Suffolk landscape has taught us that. It may be remote but we've not been short of company. Apart from the adders and cuckoo and flocks of itinerant tits and finches, we have almost daily visits by a marauding sparrowhawk and nightly visits by up to three badgers who have not just pulled down our bird feeder but actually run off with it.
Male sparrowhawk in the garden We've had the local moth enthusiasts put down traps in our garden and, one night, record a staggering 105 species. Other sounds of our new life have included the lapwings with that strange cry that reminds me of 1980s electronica (younger readers, ask your parents). We're within earshot of bitterns who start the spring with a 'boom train' of three booms and then rise to six or more during their peak. But the best feature of our bucolic life has not been the flora, fauna, fungi, the digger wasps and stone curlews, it's been the people. From the wardens to the volunteers to the locals to the mothmen and the birders. Too many to name but if I say Nick, John, Sue, Matt, Ian and David then that probably covers around two dozen of them, including my wife (she's a Sue, not a Dave). With the threat of Sizewell, global warming and economic strife, difficult times may lie ahead. Nature always finds a way but it finds a way faster and more effectively when it has the assistance and goodwill of the people who care.
Male black redstart, one of the more unexpected visitors to the garden