Apologies for the delay since my last sightings blog. It’s been a busy few weeks, with staff illness, holidays, and running workshops at the Latitude Festival meaning that I’ve struggled to find the time to complete some of our routine admin tasks, never mind write a blog.
It’s also been hard to know exactly what to write as our wildlife has come under more stress than I can remember during my 20 years at Minsmere – or my 40+ years of birdwatching, for that matter.
The continuing drought has had a big impact on some of our wildlife, with large parts of the Scrape looking very dry recently. Our wardens are trying hard to raise water levels, but the hot weather has meant much of the water has evaporated as fast as it is put onto the Scrape.
Birdflu has also had a serious impact on some of the birds breeding on the Scrape, as it has on seabird colonies across the country. At least 150 dead birds have been recorded on the Scrape as a result, mostly black-headed gulls, common and Sandwich terns. This is only a fraction of the numbers affected at colonies in Scotland, Northumberland and North Norfolk, as well as various sites across Europe, and the current birdflu outbreak threatens the survival of some of our already endangered seabird species.
During last week's heatwave I wasn't inspired to spend long out on the reserve, and lacked the inspiration to write a blog, and then came the devastating news that the government had approved the building of Sizewell C. This has the potential to cause large scale disturbance to some of our most sensitive habitats and wildlife during the ten year construction phase, and beyond.
Despite all this bad news, there is still loads of wildlife to see. Numbers of birds on the Scrape are a bit lower than expected for the time of year, but there is still a good variety of species. Southbound waders passing through include spotted redshank, greenshank, green and common sandpipers, ruff (photo below), dunlin, knot, whimbrel and little ringed plover, plus the first curlew sandpiper of the summer on Sunday. Avocets, black-tailed godwits and lapwings all remain too. The common and Sandwich terns have been joined by an Arctic tern this week, while a black tern and several little gulls were seen for most of last week.
A few wigeon and teal have started to return to the Scrape, but most of the ducks have moved to Island Mere to moult, with good flocks of gadwall, mallard and shoveler seen. Several broods of shelducks remain on the Scrape, too. More unusual ducks seen at Island Mere in the last week or so have included a moulting male red-crested pochard and a couple of pochards. Also at Island Mere, up to four great egrets remain, while a cattle egret roamed the reserve one day last week (photo, below, by Steve Everett). Grey heron, little egret and bittern are all regularly seen, too, as are marsh harriers and bearded tits. On Monday I was lucky enough to have a bittern fly barely six feet above me over the North Wall!
In the dunes there are regular sightings of stonechats, whitethroats, linnets and reed buntings, with many youngsters suggesting that they have have a good breeding season. Sand martins continue to feed over the reserve, and with their second broods fledging it looks to have a good year for them too. Another highlight on Monday was seeing a late adult cuckoo flying along the beach. There is also a good variety of butterflies and crickets in the dunes.
The biggest variety of butterflies, though, is in the woods, especially along the Woodland Trail and between Bittern Hide and Island Mere. In fact, during last week's butterfly transect, our volunteers counted more than 1000 butterflies in total, By far the most spectacular of these are the silver-washed fritillaries, with up to 60 of these huge butterflies seen each day. A few white admirals can be seen too, and there have been a couple of sightings of purple emperors this weekend (photo below by Jon Evans). This is a very scarce butterfly in East Anglia, with a small isolated population a few miles from the reserve, and they are not seen at Minsmere every year.
Another scarce butterfly that's been seen this week is the clouded yellow, a migrant from southern Europe that you might be lucky enough to spot in the dunes. Also look out for the extremely well camouflaged grayling in the dunes. Other butterflies to look for include peacock, red admiral, painted lady, comma, small copper, brown argus, common blue, meadow brown, gatekeeper and ringlet.
Dragonflies are numerous too - our volunteers counted more than 450 during last week's survey. The bigger species include brown, southern and migrant hawkers and emperor dragonflies, although the smaller common and ruddy darters may be more obvious. Damselflies include red-eyed and emerald damselflies around the pond and the willow emerald damselflies in the ditches alongside the Sluice track.
Of course, it's always worth spending time around Digger Alley in the summer, watching bee-wolves, ornate-tailed wasps, pantaloon bees, green-eyed flower bees, red-banded sand wasps (photo below by Steve Everett) and other fascinating insects that burrow beneath your feet.