Springwatch stars showing off

We welcomed Etholle George from BBC Radio Suffolk back to Minsmere yesterday to present her breakfast show live from the Discovery Centre. Her story on BBC Look East, filmed last week, was also braodcast on bulletins throughout Tuesday.

Etholle was here to celebrate the success of Springwatch six months on, catch up with some of the wildlife stars, and learn how Minsmere has benefited form increased visitor numbers. We heard from the BTO about the travels of Chris the Cuckoo, from series producer James Smith and Minsmere's Adam Rowlands about working together to bring Minsmere's wildlife to your screens, from Bill Jenman about the successful Touching the Tide project, and their work here at Minsmere with the Green Light Trust, and from Michaela Strachan live from South Africa. 

Apologies for anyone listening that you had to keep hearing me chatting to Etholle. Much more enjoyable was hearing our volunteers Ally and Ellie chatting to roving reporter Luke Deal from the reserve itself - once it finally got light. After describing the scene on the Scrape, they spotted a small group of red deer in the woods on route to Island Mere. Once in the hide, one of the star species from Springwatch performed right on cue as a bittern strolled around for 25 minutes close to the hide. The otter and kingfisher had already been and gone for the morning though. Another Springwatch star was Grub, the young tawny owl, and it would be nice to think that maybe he was one of the two or three tawnies that were calling constantly until dawn finally broke.

Etholle George interviewing my colleague, Rupert, whilst perched in our popular bittern nest

Don't worry if you missed the programme as you can listen again here.

I wandered down to Island Mere myself mid afternoon, and like Luke, Ally and Ellie, I was greeted by the sight of a bittern feeding close to the front of the hide. This bittern (it may be more than one) has been regularly performing for the crowds over the last week or so, which is unusual during the autumn. We usually expect to see more of this behaviour from February onwards.

The show-off bittern at Island Mere yesterday by Ian Barthorpe

The great white egret continues to show on and off at Island Mere, sometimes moving out to the Levels to feed, while snipe, two goldeneyes and a pochard have been other highlights there this week. The starlings put on a great show on Saturday, but didn't perform well last night in murky weather. Hope they are still roosting here.

Work is well underway on the project to replace the Scrape fence, after a delay to retrieve a sunken digger on Saturday. The digger is working around East Hide at the moment, though most of the ducks are happy to feed or rest on other parts of the Scrape. Water levels are quite high in places (though the paths are fully accessible now), so apart from lapwings and the odd snipe there are few waders on the Scrape. Two whooper swans are favouring the pool behind Wildlife Lookout, or the Konik Field, but the Bewick's swans seem to be feeding north of Westleton during the day.

Flocks of tits, finches and thrushes continue to attract attention around the visitor centre, in North Bushes, and in the woods. Among these are several bullfinches, siskins and redpolls, large flocks of fieldfares and a few redwings, and the odd brambling. The latter favour the leaf litter behind the reception, and a treecreeper was seen in that area today too. Rather excitingly there were a couple of brief waxwing records last week. Hopefully they are precursors to a bigger arrival. Likewise, a female smew was briefly on the Scrape last week.