Are you counting down the days yet?
Yes folks, there's only five more sleeps till Christmas. That means only four more chances to visit Minsmere before the big day to stock up on some last minute presents, refill your dwindling bird food supplies, or sample the delicious cheese scones, fruit crumble or sausage butties in the cafe.
Our delicious cheese scone - photo by John Chapman
Don't forget that Minsmere will then be closed for two days - Christmas Day and Boxing Day - while we enjoy the festivities and the bitterns, otters and other wildlife can safely go back into hiding - or perhaps take the opportunity to parade in the open. The car park, toilets, hides and nature trails will be closed, not just the visitor centre, though you can still spot some of our wildlife from the public footpaths around the perimeter of the reserve (or why not try exploring RSPB North Warren where there are some impressive flocks of ducks). And don't worry, we're open again on Tuesday 27 December for some fabulous post-Christmas birdwatching and the chance to walk off some of the excesses.
As well as counting down, we'll soon be adding up too - adding up the total number of species seen in 2016, for example. We added several more species to the already impressive Minsmere list this year, including the UK's first western purple swamphen in July and August, Suffolk's first cliff swallow in November, and a Thayer's gull in March, as well as a variety of new invertebrates.
Western purple swamphen by Philip Tyler
On 1 January I'm sure that many visitors will be keen to start 2017 off in style too, with sightings of some of Minsmere's popular species such as bitterns, marsh harriers, bearded tits, otters, green woodpeckers and red deer. Will our keener birdwatchers find anything unusual to start the new year off?
Then, later in the month it will be time to focus your attention on your gardens for an hour as we all take part in the annual RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch. This important survey has been extended to run over three days this year - Saturday 28 to Monday 30 January, so there should be no excuses not to take part. All you need to do is count your garden birds for an hour and submit the results at www.rspb.org.uk/birdwatch. You can already register to take part by following the link.
Why not practice your counting and ID skills around the feeders outside our visitor centre, where we regularly see coal and marsh tits and great spotted woodpeckers as well as the more familiar blue and great tits, chaffinches, greenfinches, goldfinches, dunnocks, robins, magpies and pheasants. Nearby, a stoat put on a fantastic display as it chased a rabbit arond the pond and across the boardwalk for at least five minutes this morning - while our guided walk attendees looked on in amazement.
Stoat by Steve Everett
Our volunteer guides have already been busy counting this week, with at least 1800 lapwings on the Scrape yesterday, 1500 common scoters offshore, and hundreds of ducks on the Scrape. While counting flocks this size often involves some estimates (usually by breaking the flock into smaller units), other species are present in much smaller numbers, making them easier to count. There have been some good midwinter counts of waders on the Scrape, including 34 black-tailed godwits, 15 dunlins, 15 golden plovers and a few redshanks, turnstones and curlews. highlights among the ducks have been the odd pair of pintails and upto four pochards on the Scrape, while long-tailed duck, goldeneye and scaup have all been seen among the scoters on the sea.
Other notable seabirds included good numbers of great crested grebes and red-throated divers, the occasional gannet or guillemot, and odd small flocks of dark-bellied brent geese. More surprising was a flock of eight pale-bellied brent geese that flew south this morning, followed soon afterwards by one heading north. This is the Greenland race of brent goose and while common in Ireland and western Scotland it is rare to see them in Suffolk.
In the reedbed there are still regular sightings of otters, bitterns, marsh harriers, bearded tits, water rails and kingfishers. We've also been busy starting the next phase of a major project to improve the quality of our reedbed. This has involved using an amphibious reed cutting machine, called a Truxor, to clear reeds between Wildlife Lookout and Bittern Hide, before drying that section of reedbed out to continue management by lowering the soil surface.