The New Year started with a beautiful blue sky yesterday morning, before the cloud rolled in on the biting easterly wind. The sun brought out the crowds too, helping us to compile a respectable New Year's Day list of 86 species of birds plus at least five mammals. Although the weather has been a bit duller today, we've managed to add a few more to the list, taking us to 90 so far. In contrast, we only saw 79 bird species on 1 January 2015 and it took us until 9 January to reach 90.
Many of these 90 species are common ones that don't even make it onto our daily What's About sheet - robin, blackbird, blue tit, woodpigeon, magpie, for example - but there were a few interesting species too.
The biggest surprise of the day yesterday was a sooty shearwater spotted flying south offshore. These long-distance travellers are generally scarce off the Suffolk coast, and very rarely seen outside of the main migration months of August to October. Indeed, they should by now be heading back to their breeding grounds off the coast of Brazil.
The onshore winds brought other interesting seabirds close to the beach too, including gannets, red-throated divers, great crested grebes, common scoters, a red-breasted merganser and a couple of little gulls. The latter are rarely reported in December but magically appear on or near 1 January in most years. Interestingly, three adult little gulls settled on South Scrape at lunchtime today.
On the Scrape there was the usual mix of ducks - wigeon, gadwall, teal, mallard, shoveler and shelduck - along with three handsome pintails, but the continuing mild weather means that we are still waiting for any smews to arrive. Although Minsmere doesn't attract big flocks of waders in winter, apart from lapwings, the first two days of the year have produced records of the following species: golden plover, dunlin, snipe, black-tailed godwit, curlew, redshank and turnstone, as well as a lone unseasonal avocet today. An Egyptian goose was seen on the Levels this morning too.
An Egyptian goose up close by Ian Barthorpe
The glaucous gull was seen on 31 December, but hasn't made an appearance yet in 2016. Both Caspian and yellow-legged gulls were seen on the Scrape yesterday, alongside the five commoner species - black-headed, common, herring, lesser and great black-backed gulls - and a Mediterranean gull has also been seen over the Scrape and reedbed. Another interesting species on the Scrape is linnet, with a small flock present on West Scrape.
With the windy weather our reedbed wildlife continues to be a bit more elusive, but many visitors have been lucky to add bittern, otter, marsh harrier or kingfisher to the year lists already. Water rails and bearded tits have also been noted, but a fox swimming in front of Bittern Hide took observers by surprise this morning, as did a weasel running around inside the Public Viewpoint.
Our regular birds of prey were all reported yesterday - marsh harrier, sparrowhawk, buzzard, kestrel and peregrine - as well as a short-eared owl, but hen harriers continue to be absent this winter.
There were interesting sightings in the woods too, including a firecrest near Island Mere yesterday, chiffchaff and treecreeper near South Belt Crossroads, and several bullfinches in North Bushes.
Male bullfinch by John Bridges (rspb-images.com)
Perhaps more notable were species not noted so far. Among them are Canada goose, tufted duck, song thrush, redwing, nuthatch and reed bunting (all seen on 1 January last year). No-one has reported red deer yet either - though that is surely an oversight. Let us know if you can add any species to our list.
I hope that 2016 brings you many exciting wildlife memories. Who knows what may turn up after Minsmere - after July's albatross, anything must be possible.
I'm fairly sure that red deer were among the sightings on the board in the Bittern Hide today. I didn't see any, though.
Our herring gulls are red listed birds. Think about that the next time you hear some flaming idiot calling for a cull of them.