Today is World Migratory Bird Day, when our Birdlife International partners around the world come together to celebration the wonders of migration. There will be mass participation birdwatching events, bird counts, surveys, workshops and other events in countries on every continent.
Here at Minsmere we celebrate birds and migration every day, and there are always some incredible migration stories. For example, we've found colour-ringed gulls from as far afield as Poland, Ukraine and Czech Republic, seen spoonbills with Dutch rings and great white egrets with French rings, and watched marsh harriers bearing wingtags fitted in Norfolk. We had reports a few years ago of a satellite tagged osprey being tracked over the reserve, despite no-one actually seeing it here.
Of course, over the years we've also seen many migrating birds turning up here after being blown off course. Recent examples include the semi-palmated sandpiper from North America that was on the Scrape this summer, a cliff swallow from North America a couple of autumns ago, the western purple swamphen from Spain in 2016 and the black-browed albatross form the Southern Oceans (via Germany) the year before.
These birds may have been "lost" but many migrants do successfully complete their journeys between breeding grounds and winter quarters. Think of the swalllows, sand martins and reed warblers that migrate between Minsmere and Southern Africa each year, or the redwings, fieldfares and waxwings that arrive from Scandinavia. Whooper swans and pink-footed geese visit the UK from Iceland, and Bewick's swans fly more than 3500 every autumn from Siberia.
Some birds fit somewhere the two. They are off course, but regular visitors, and may be pioneering new routes rather being truly lost. Two such examples can be seen at Minsmere this week. The ferruginous duck that continues to favour the pool behind South Hide has flown from eastern Europe or Central Asia, while a tiny yellow-browed warbler has flown SW from Siberia, instead of heading SE to southern Asia. The latter is a truly incredible feat of migration as yellow-browed warblers are barely bigger than a goldcrest, yet have managed to fly thousands of miles. One of these tiny birds was caught by the Waveney Bird Club during their weekly ringing demonstration on Thursday (the last of these will be held on 25 October), and has been heard again near the car park entrance this morning.
Yellow-browed warbler by Ian Barthorpe
Of course, many of our goldcrests will have flown here from Scandinavia, as will some of our robins, blackbirds, chaffinches and starlings. With them come some larger birds, such as short-eared owls or hen harriers, which have been known to feed on the tired migrants during their journey. The first short-eared owl of the winter was seen on the dunes this morning.
The cattle egret and three great white egrets were seen again yesterday, and they are examples of migrants that are outside their more typical range, having dispersed north from the Mediterranean area.
Other birds are more sedentary, though a proportion of their population may migrate. These include our bitterns, bearded tits and marsh harriers, as well as many of our garden birds.
It's also worth remembering that some of our insects are migratory too, such as clouded yellow, painted lady and red admiral butterflies, migrant hawker dragonflies and many species of moth. Nature truly is wonderful, and migration is perhaps the most spectacular example of all.
Thanks for the short-eared owl report Naturalist.
Clare - I might have guessed you'd remember the detail of the Loch Garten osprey
The satellite tagged osprey was Loch Garten's Tore back in August 2011. The excellent Robin was the lucky spotter.
On Thuresday evening 11th we were down at the beach at twilight, about 6pm, just below the beach gate at the water line when a short eared owl flew out of the reserve over our heads and straight on out to sea. It had a short altercation with a passing gull then continued out for a while. It then turned South and made little headway against the wind till it dropped to just above the waves and made its way back to shore near the sluice.