Are you ready for the RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch this weekend? If possible, try to find one hour on Saturday, Sunday or Monday (yes it runs over three days this year) to count your garden birds, then submit you results at www.rspb.org.uk/birdwatch. Remember, you only record the largest count of each species during the hour, not a cumulative total.
We've had a regular pied wagtail in our garden in recent days, so I'm hoping that he'll turn up when we do our count, along with the starlings, blackbirds, robin, goldfinches and woodpigeons. Will anything unusual turn up, like the goldcrest two years ago or the reed bunting that visited my garden during the first ever garden birdwatch back in 1979.
We don't usually submit results from Minsmere's feeders, as they may slightly skew the figures - 20+ blue tits, 15+ great tits, 20+ chaffinches, 3+ coal tits and 3+ marsh tits are easily possibly on our feeders, as well as pheasants, robins, dunnocks, blackbirds and goldfinches. Don't forget the muntjac and grey squirrels either.
I've had some excellent close encounters with various types of wildlife this week, including a lovely male muntjac that stood and looked at me in the North Bushes yesterday. Shortly after that I disturbed a pristine male sparrowhawk on the North Wall - I could clearly see the blue-grey upperparts and dark barring across the peachy breast as it zipped across in front of me.
A little later on I spotted this water rail feeding alongside the path on the North Wall. Sadly I only had time to snap a quick shot - there have been many much better photos taken of water rails at Minsmere this week, especially at Island Mere where up to four can be seen.
Another species that has attracted attention at Island Mere was a beautiful water shrew that trotted across the ice on Sunday, only to be caught by an opportunistic crow - much to the chagrin of the people in the hide.
Of course, predators catching prey is all part of nature, and a few lucky observers were able to watch a peregrine catch and eat an unfortunate moorhen close to North Hide this morning. Although I didn't get a chance to have a look, I have been lucky enough to watch peregrines hunting on several occasions, and it's a truly spectacular sight.
Not all predatory birds will kill their own food though, Many will take the opportunity to scavenge on things that are already dead (as seen with the carcass cameras on Winterwatch this week). One such scavenger at Minsmere is a handsome first winter glaucous gull that has found a dead seal along the southern edge of our beach. When not feeding, this gull happily rests on the outfall of the Misnmere sluice, affording excellent views to visitors, as can be seen from Charles Cuthbert's excellent photos.
Our bearded tits have also been putting on quite a show this week, especially in the reed edges near Wildlife Lookout, where my wife finally managed good views of these beautiful birds on Saturday. This may not be the best photo you'll see of bearded tits, but it does show how they're balancing on the seed heads as they droop towards the ground.
Saturday's visit also yielded super close views of a snipe feeding and bathing on the edge of East Scrape - just one of many of these usually well camouflaged birds that can be spotted around the Scrape. This particular one was spotted by my eight year old. I had completely missed it!
So, with many of our species proving unusually tame this week, now could be the perfect time to visit us.