Life And Death At Minsmere

Spring at Minsmere is well and truly in full swing and as we draw to the end
of May we have had many natural events and coming and goings to celebrate.

Now that the weather is heating up so too is the number of species found in
our moth trap. There is something of a changing of the guard in this sense.
The regulars of the past month e.g. hebrew character and common quaker moths
are now replaced by the swarms of cinnabars and frequent brimstone moths.

We have new Konik foals on the Levels, often joined by lots of goslings from
any of the three species of geese we have breeding here. With a quick scan
of the Scrape you can quite easily identify the small balls of fluff as
chicks of some sort. I'm not a professional ID whizz and the approach I
employ is the "if its standing next to an adult avocet...it's an avocet" one.

Although spring is most frequently associated with life it is also very much
filled with death. Death of one species often means life for another,
although this is sometimes hard to understand whilst you sit helplessly
while a Montagu's harrier systematically rifles through nest after nest on
our beloved Scrape (as happened two weeks ago).

The Scrape is a purpose built breeding ground for many duck, gull and wader
species. It boasts an electrified anti predator fence which is the last
defence against large mammals such as foxes and mink.

This brings me nicely onto recent incidents here at Minsmere. The Montagu's
harrier, whilst a great record for Minsmere, decided to stay almost two
weeks doing untold damage to this year's crop of chicks. More recently, our problems
come from our furry friends...the mammals. Our scrape and the birds nesting
there are under constant attack from one particular fox. Its nightly raids
are somewhat hard to quantify, but the tufts of feathers strewn around the
area suggest it's quite a problem. That animal is feeding young, there is no
doubt. All we can do is mobilise wardens to repair the fence and make it as
difficult as possible for the animal to gain access. We must balance our
repairs and improvements with disturbance to nesting birds, which is just
another challenge we face.

At the weekend, we were quickly introduced to another mammalian mother with
young to feed. A stoat has discovered the apparently endless larder of sand
martins. The stoat's visits are frequent and in broad daylight. Its brazen
attitude has had many people upset and asking what we do to prevent this. We
have filled in burrows, made repairs to the fence, but it is a determined and
very agile animal. We will continue to keep an eye on the sand martins and
hopefully they will try for another brood. In the case of the sand martins,
death sustains life as do the fox's nightly visits.

There seems to be  more to spring than meets the eye. The cycle of life will
continue and come mid to late summer when the birds finally fledge we soon
realise that these trials are all part of life and indeed all we can do is
our best. Our role involves hard work and understanding of nature's
requirements. We will move into next year's breeding season with our
experience from the last and try to improve and move forward to face new
challenges in a changing environment.