The autumn is often a good time of year to look for one of our most popular birds, the bearded tit, and they have certainly been putting on a good show this week. Also known as bearded reedlings, or simply beardies, the name bearded tit is a real misnomer. They are neither tits, nor bearded. They are, in fact, more closely related to the parrotbills of southeast Asia, and the male's black "beard" is actually more of a moustache.
Male bearded tit by Jon Evans
When Minsmere became an RSPB nature reserve in April 1947, only four or five bearded tits remained in the UK, and they were all at Minsmere. Many of the reedbeds that they rely on had been drained, and the bitterly cold winter that year had virtually wiped them out. Thankfully, careful habitat management at Minsmere, and elsewhere, has helped these beautiful birds to recover to the current healthy populations, with bearded tits now found in reedbeds throughout southern and Eastern England and into Wales and northwest England.
Female bearded tit by Jon Evans
Bearded tits spend the summer feeding on insects, before switching to a diet of reed seeds throughout the winter. This requires a change in the physiology of the gut, and they need to ingest tiny grains of sand and grit to help them to grind down the seeds. As a result, you can often spot beardies feeding along the edges of the paths or any cut patches of reed, or even on the path itself. In addition, during the autumn large flocks of beardies will erupt from the reedbed on calm mornings, climbing to a height of several metres before dropping back into the reeds. Sometimes, these flocks will rise much higher and birds will disperse to reedbeds elsewhere, helping them to establish new colonies.
Bearded tits gathering grit or seeds from the path by Andrew Bennett
Both of these factors, combined with the population being boosted following a successful breeding season, means that October is often the best month to see them. Ideally, you want to pick a calm morning and arrive early as they tend to be most active before 10 am. Better still, learning their distinctive pinging call, as that's how you are most likely to find them. Then head to Island Mere, the North Wall, or (best of all at the moment), the path between South Hide and the Sluice, and wait patiently. Or why not book onto one of our Reedbed Ramble guided walks and let our guides take you deep into the reedbed in search of beardies.
Of course, there is far more to see in the reedbed than just bearded tits. Several great egrets remain, and if you're patient in Bittern or Island Mere Hides then you have a good chance of seeing up to four species of herons: bitterns, grey herons, little and great egrets. You should spot marsh harriers, buzzards and possibly hobbies hunting over the reeds, or perhaps hear a squealing water rail. Kingfishers are best seen at Minsmere in the autumn and there are regular reports form both these hides at the moment. Several great crested grebes are still at Island Mere, too, hiding among the large flock of moulting ducks, which might include a few pintails, pochards or tufted ducks. The summering whooper swan remains too.
Kingfisher by Steve Everett
The hobbies will be likely to be hunting dragonflies, with good numbers of migrant hawkers and common and ruddy darters still on the wing. Today's sunshine has also brought out both adders and grass snakes, while a water vole has been spotted in the pond for the first time in a few weeks.
The star mammals in October, though, are the rutting red deer. You can watch these distantly from the public footpaths around Westleton Heath, but for the best views why not book a red deer safari and let our guides take you closer tot he deer from the warmth of a 4x4 truck.
October is also a good month to look for migrant birds, and there have been a couple of reports over the last few days of a yellow-browed warbler close to the pond. This is a scarce visitor from Siberia, closely related to the more familiar chiffchaff. Both can often be found among tit flocks, so I spent a bit of time searching carefully through a large flock in the North Bushes this afternoon. No yellow-browed warbler, but the flock did included treecreeper, goldcrest, marsh tit, several coal tits, great tits and chiffchaffs, at least 20 long-tailed tits and 40+ blue tits. Needless to say, the made quite a bit of noise.
Long-tailed tit by Clare Carter
Other migrants that have been seen this week include blackcaps, lesser whitethroats, a spotted flycatcher and both rock pipit and water pipit. A short-eared owl was a brief visitor to the South Levels, too. Easier to see are the pied wagtails, meadow pipits and goldfinches that are feeding on the exposed mud on East Scrape - there were 100+ of the latter today! Work is progressing well on both the reprofiling of East Scrape and the new accessible path to East Hide, with both projects expected to be completed by the end of the month. There will be some brief closures of the North Wall and the East Hide access path during this work, but we can't yet say when this will be. Please check our Facebook and Twitter pages for the latest information.
There is still plenty of water on both West and South Scrape, where flocks of moulting ducks have been joined by a few lapwings and snipe, but just one or two avocets, dunlins and black-tailed godwits remain. Two grey plovers were still present today, too. As gulls come in to roost in the evenings you may be lucky enough to spot a Caspian or yellow-legged gull among the flock.
Who knows what else might appear in October. A rare visitor from Siberia, or even North America? Starling murmurations? Only time will tell.