Flying high again
IF CERTAIN Danish brewers did birdwatching days out they could not have organised a spectacular adventure quite like this...
Being handed the keys to the RSPB’S flagship nature reserve for a personal lockdown look-around last weekend bestowed one of the most memorable birding events of my life. And, like egrets, I have had a few.
Regular readers of this column will know how last Sunday marked the 50th anniversary of my first visit to Minsmere, the conservation charity’s famous Suffolk sanctuary famed for its patchwork of precious habitats and the rare species they harbour.
Covid-19 has meant the reserve has been off limits for the thousands who flock to the reserve each spring to hear nightingale arias and bitterns booming. Luckily, I was honoured by getting permission to go on a personal pilgrimage around its 2,500 acres and with the keys to its hides to rekindle precious schoolboy memories. It quickly reaffirmed beliefs that this is my favourite place to watch wildlife anywhere in the world.
I could not have wished for a more auspicious start with a welcoming reception from a barn owl on the wing followed by the haunting cries of stone curlews floating over rabbit-cropped grasslands.
Heading towards the coastal path, my walk was electrified by the chattering of scores of sand martins, their calls sounding like the crackles made by overhead power lines. Reed warblers and gabbling sedge warblers added to the soundtrack.
Stymied by not being able to get into the coastal hide overlooking the reserve’s showpiece “Scrape”, the shallow lagoon with its breeding seabirds, I headed towards another wetland area on the southern fringes of the reserve that are ingrained in my birdwatching memories. Here, on that auspicious day in 1970 when I visited the reserve with the local natural history society, a little egret, in those days an extremely rare bird, crossed our path.
As if stage-managed, right on cue a little egret materialised on snowy wings followed by two others in a dazzling flypast to give testimony of how these colonists from southern Europe have established themselves.
Another bird now prospering in a time of climate change is the hobby. Along the trail that skirts the Scrape and vast reedbed, I saw at least five of these sleek falcons hawking for dragonflies. Before departing, I walked back to the coast with new keys for a last look over the Scrape from the East Hide.
This special place opened my teenage eyes to the delights of shorebirds and, once again, I was enthralled by the tiptoeing of avocets, the posturing of black-tailed godwits and the raucous cackles of gulls and terns.
Remarkably, more than 100 diminutive little terns, a species in serious decline in recent years, were hunkered down on the small gravel islands that provide safe nesting areas.without doubt, the most beautiful gulls on view were the two dozen or so Mediterranean gulls in their breeding plumage of jet black heads contrasting with icy white wings; another species taking advantage of a warming climate.
How ironic that efforts to reduce harmful carbon emissions now threaten Minsmere.the RSPB says plans to build a new nuclear power station, Sizewell C, close to the reserve “could be catastrophic for wildlife” with construction work increasing erosion and upsetting the delicate balance of the reserve.
‘Honoured by the pilgrimage’