My weekly series of blogs featuring one of the 70 species that we've challenged you find at Minsmere this year continues with possibly one of our most popular birds: the bearded tit. As you may have read in my blog last week, these beautiful little birds have been showing very well recently, and we're offering you a rare chance to search for them off the beaten track this month - see here for details.
Male bearded tits have got to be challengers for the title of best looking bird in the world, not just the UK. Their head and breast are a delicate dove-grey-blue, contrasting with bright orange-brown upperparts and lower belly. The wings and tail are patterned with white and black markings. The bill and eye are bright orange, adding a wonderful touch of character to their expression, but it's the long, broad black moustache that really tops off this stylish bird's plumage features.
Male bearded tit by Jon Evans
Females share many of the same plumage features, but lack the moustache and their heads are a similar colour to the upperparts. Unusually, the juveniles are equally stunning, with a black band between the eyes and bill (a part of the body known as the lores), and more extensive marks down the back. They are paler too.
Juvenile bearded tit by Jon Evans
Of course, despite their name, I have so far only referred to moustaches and not beards. However, the confusion over their nameing goes much further than this. Bearded tits are, in fact, not tits at all. They actually more closely related to the seed-eating parrotbills of Asia or the larger babblers of Asia and Africa, but belong in a family all of their own. They are still often known by the old Norfolk name of bearded reedling too.
Bearded tits are exclusively reedbed birds. They are superb acrobats, clinging to different reed stems with each foot as they clamber and flit between the reeds in search of food. For much of the year, this food consists almost exclusively of insects, spiders and other invertebrates. However, as the reed seeds ripen and fall to the ground, these exquisite birds have a special trick up their sleeves - or rather inside their tiny bodies. Seeds provide a highly nutritious and more reliable alternative to insects during the winter, but they are harder to digest. Therefore, the bearded tit actually changes the lining of its stomach to help it to digest the seeds. They even ingest tiny seeds and grit to act like a grindstone inside the stomach.
Due to this penchant for grit, at some reserves, such as RSPB Leighton Moss in Lancashire, we provide grit trays in the reedbed, making them easier to spot. At Minsmere, they often take advantage of our sandy soils and find grit along the edges of reedbed, or even on the paths, such as along the boardwalk to Island Mere Hide, so grit trays have not be successful when used in the past.
What's more, they often take advantage of calm autumn mornings to disperse to new reedbeds with flocks of 20 or more "erupting" from the reedbed, often climbing to a great height. Some will return to the same reedbed, but many youngsters will move elsewhere at this time, often colonising new reedbeds as a result. This behaviour undoubtedly help bearded tits to spread to many parts of southern and eastern England when numbers began to recover from the low point of just four pairs in the UK at Minsmere in 1947 - the year that Minsmere became an RSPB nature reserve, of course.
Of course, bearded tits aren't the only species to look for in the reedbeds during October. Bitterns, otters and marsh harriers continue to be seen every day, with otter sightings likely to increase as the winter progresses. Kingfishers can be seen anywhere, but the reedbed hides seem to be the most reliable, while water rails and Cetti's warblers can be heard even if they remain hidden from view. Several hobbies are still hunting dragonflies above the reeds too.
Hobby by Oscar Dewhurst
If you stay till duck, you may be rewarded by a starling murmuration in the reedbed. at least 4000 birds seem to be gathering over the Scrape at about 6.30 pm, before roosting in the reedbed behind South Hide, so North Hide, South Hide, Wildlife Lookout or the path to the sluice should all be good places to watch from.
Out on the Scrape, there remains a great selection of ducks and waders to spot. Hundreds of teals, gadwalls, mallards and wigeons dominate numerically, while black-tailed godwits and lapwings remain the most numerous waders. Other species to look for include dunlins, little stints, ringed plovers, ruffs, snipe, redshanks and about six avocets, but the pectoral sandpiper has not been seen since Saturday. When I was in East Hide this morning, the dunlins, stints and ringed plovers were on closest island to the hide, showing just how tiny little stints are - especially when a meadow pipit stood close to one of them!
The first yellow-browed warbler of the autumn was seen in the Sluice Bushes on Thursday, but was only seen occasionally and has not been reported since early Saturday morning. Similarly, a male brambling was in the North Bushes for a day or two, and the first redwings have begun to arrive. Lesser redpolls and meadow pipits are passing over most days, and goldcrest and robin numbers appear to be increasing as autumn migration begins to hot up.
Male brambling by Jon Evans