Too Hot For Birds?

 July 5th Minsmere

My first visit to Minsmere in almost 2 years! I went out with Dad to check out how this reserve was dealing with Covid restrictions. Most of the changes were around the visitor centre and the café area. The rest of the reserve was more or less the same just with the usual rules applied. The picnic benches outside the café were for the café customers only, so we had to take our packed lunches to the beach, where we watched terns fly over us with fish in their bills and sand martins collecting material from the dunes a few metres behind from where we were sitting.

On the way to the beach, we came across the spot along the main path where the solitary wasps and bees make their nesting burrows and a little further on, we found a strange black worm-like creature crawling beneath our feet. This, I believe, was a great silver diving beetle larvae, which is known to leave the water from time to time.

Great Silver Diving Beetle Larvae & Little Terns (July 5th),
Otter (July 7th) and Grey Wagtail (July 10th)

The scrapes were alive with bird life. Terns especially were very active and noisy as they (and the black-headed gulls) had chicks to feed. Most of them were common and sandwich terns, but, in front of the South Hide, there was a small colony of little terns. These and a Mediterranean gull, a ruff and a spotted redshank in almost perfect black summer plumage asides from a scruffy white patch around the eye (which should be more ringed shaped) were all new additions to my year list, taking it to 135. Also seen at the scrapes were; kittiwakes, avocets, oystercatchers, lapwing, shelducks, a common sandpiper, black-tailed godwits and lesser black-backed gulls. Meanwhile on the dunes, I encountered a ringed plover and a whitethroat.

At the Bittern and Island Mere hides, we saw a bittern, marsh harriers and hobbies and heard bearded tits. Also found during our visit were; Norfolk hawker dragonflies, ringlet, small heath and small copper butterflies, really large southern marsh orchids, hound's-tongue, sheep's-bit scabious, centaury, biting and English stonecrops, sea kale and yellow-horned poppies.

July 7th Strumpshaw Fen

A fairly quiet, grey morning at Strumpshaw. Not too much around during my pre-shift walk except for a few marsh harriers, an oystercatcher, 2 bullfinches and hearing some bearded tits. At Reception Hide, I saw 2 kingfishers, an otter and a bittern appearing minutes between them, which livened the shift up a bit.

July 10th Nagshead RSPB

Since July 8th, I've travelled with my parents to my youngest brother's place in Cheltenham to stay for a long weekend away. Two of these days were spent visiting zoos, but on the Saturday (July 10th), we all went to the Forest of Dean. My mum and I went birdwatching at Nagshead (the place where I was washed out and almost cried with a Naturetrek group last March) while my dad, brother and my brother's girlfriend visited a sculpture trail a few miles down the road.

I was hoping to find pied flycatchers, wood warblers, redstarts and a few other specialities found on this side of the UK. Sadly, July is a quiet time of year with many of them moulting by now. However, I did think I heard a redstart make a short outburst, but I'm not really familiar with their song to be completely certain. There was one hide that provided views of a fleeing fallow deer, 2 stock doves, nuthatches, goldcrests, a buzzard and a grey wagtail, but other than that, it was a fairly disappointing trip.

July 14th Strumpshaw Fen

Another quiet, grey morning with the odd drizzle of rain. Not much again, though the marsh harriers were flying close to the Reception Hide. A kingfisher also flashed by as well as sightings of a common tern, a heron, a little egret, a sparrowhawk and many ducks in eclipse phase plumage. I also had a short walk amongst the marsh orchids in the meadow trail and saw a great spotted woodpecker.

July 20th Norwich

A heatwave has hit the UK this week on the week in which many of the Covid restrictions being relaxed or scrapped. The birds have gone quiet on me for the moment, so I went dinosaur hunting instead today. Dippy the Diplodocus from the Natural History Museum of London is on tour and currently at Norwich Cathedral. It has been 10 years since I've last seen Dippy, which is a replica skeleton of the sauropod originating from the USA that stood at the entrance hall of the museum for many years before recently being replaced by a blue whale skeleton. It was an interesting reunion with him being inside a religious building. In Charles Darwin's day, a place like this wouldn't see dead in having the remains of a creature that represents evolution like this within their walls. That thought kind of amuses me a little. Today though, Dippy was attracting many visitors and the cathedral did a great job displaying him.

Dippy the Diplodocus (July 20th), Pipistrelle Bat (July 21st),
Green-lichen Beauty & Brown Argus (July 26th) 

July 21st Strumpshaw Fen

A much brighter day at Strumpshaw. In fact, it was quite warm and brought out the biting insects. It had been so hot lately that my colleagues found a bat in the sink at the reserve's workshop, in which has a nursery colony within the building's walls. It was rescued and placed on a wall to find its way back.

There were plenty of marsh harrier action this morning. One female managed to divebomb a rodent in the reedy islands in front of Reception Hide, scaring the many ducks in the process and was quickly harassed by her hungry, recently fledged chicks. Also seen were bearded tits, a kingfisher, swallows and reed warblers. After my shift, I was able to find a few silver-washed fritillaries flying around the woodland glades.

July 26th Mousehold Heath

 The second group walk at Mousehold since lockdown was lifted. The group was slightly larger than the one held in May and was led by Will the warden and Peter, our wildlife expert and included my aunt Barbara and my friend, David. The theme of the walk was about butterflies. The weather was promising to start with, but then big grey clouds covered the sun and was a bit chilly and threatened to rain, not exactly the best conditions for butterflies.

We started with a few moths caught by Peter the night before, which included some rather beautiful ones such as a green-lichen beauty. Then, we checked the trees and an area by the roadside near Zak's car park and had great views of brown argus, small coppers and, best of all, white-letter hairstreaks on some elm trees. After lunch, we made our way to an enclosed area full of wildflowers, finding purple hairstreaks along the way. In this fenced off area full of ragworts, wild oregano and other species of wildflowers, we found plenty of gatekeepers, meadow browns, burnet moths, the odd common blue and many cinnabar moth caterpillars. Also seen during our walk today was a low-flying buzzard, brown and southern hawkers, common darters and a froglet.

July 28th Strumpshaw Fen

A bit grey and muggy to begin with but brightened up before an epic thunderstorm appeared later in the evening. A few odds and ends on a fairly quiet morning, including a very, very brief otter appearance, 2 great white egrets, marsh harriers, bearded tits, a kingfisher and herons. A few families were doing some pond dipping and one caught a very tiny water scorpion to show me, which now takes me a total of 32 species out of 45 on my Strumpshaw 45 challenge.

July 29th Snettisham

For about a week now, Norfolk's 2nd ever western sandpiper has been staying at Snettisham. This is an American wader that resembles a small dunlin and very rarely visits the UK. Though going to see it was the main priority, I just wanted to visit Snettisham in general as I haven't been here since January 2017. I went with Dad and discovered that the car parks were unsurprisingly packed, but still managed to find a spot. 

Great White Egrets (July 28th), Western Sandpiper,
Roseate Tern? (the bird in centre amongst Common and Sandwich Terns),
 Knot sleeping and Knot flying (July 29th)

After the long walk to the reserve on my own (Dad wanted me to get going while he had a coffee break at the car), I found a small colony of terns sitting on some rocks in the first pool. Most of them were common terns and a single sandwich tern. But amongst them, I spotted a tern with a dark bill that was much different in shape compared to the other birds around it and was also slightly different in body size too. This, I believe, was my first ever roseate tern, the rarest of the UK's breeding tern species. It is so named due to a pink flush to the breast, not that I could see it from where I was standing. I'm still debating if this is indeed a roseate, but would love some confirmation. 

(Edit: Apparently roseate terns have much darker bills at this time of year, so probably not one sadly.) 

As for the western sandpiper, there was a lot of people looking for it. Some had seen it, others were still looking. The tide was in when I arrived to the beach and was apparently in front of Shore Hide, which was completely packed and I had to wait my turn. Looking for the bird here was like a needle in a constantly moving haystack as the flocks of hundreds of dunlin it was possibly hiding within was a bit flighty and reshuffled their positions. Knot, redshanks, godwits, turnstones, the odd common sandpiper gathered here also, forming patchy carpets of grey and orange-red plumages on the rocks in their thousands!

United with Dad, we made one more attempt at Shore Hide with the same result. We decided to head back to the beach for lunch. At this point, the tide was retreating and the birds were streaming back to the mudflats in several flocks. On our hunt for a spot to eat, someone from a group of men lined up behind a small bush with their scopes called out to us saying "Found it!" He directed us to a small lonely wader patrolling the ridge of a deep channel in the mud. Apparently this was the bird we were all looking for. I was so busy trying to find it with my camera while battling against the wind, that I didn't really appreciated it much, or get its photo after all that. The bird vanished into the muddy chasm, possibly like walking into the Grand Canyon to its point of view, and my chance for a photo was over.

I was happy to see it, but failing to get a photo of it really made me feel a little disappointed. All I could do now was watch the many birds still making their way to the mudflats to feed, including a mass exodus of the knot that weaved their way over the beach like a long waving ribbon. For the rest of the visit, Dad and I checked out the other hides, including the brand new Knots Landing Hide. We returned to the beach much later to discover that the place was deserted! All the twitchers have given up for the day. We almost had the entire beach to ourselves. Even the thousands of birds have moved on as even the mudflats appeared empty and looking like the surface of Mars. There was a curlew sandpiper on show, but no western sandpiper.

July 31st Norwich

I almost went through July without doing a dawn chorus walk! With the combination of work, my holiday to Cheltenham, the heatwave and the wet weather that sandwiched it, I've just couldn't find the right day to do it. So as it was my last chance, I had to do it today or miss out completely for my once a month lockdown dawn chorus challenge. I had just woken up after a night at work at 4:30am this morning only to discover that it was lashing down with rain. I was not looking forward to it and was expecting it to be a waste of time. However, I got outside, and it was fine. The rain had stopped, though it was still dull and grey. I decided to just do a walk around the block. Nothing that exciting, but I still can say I've done a dawn chorus in July.

The chorus itself wasn't anything amazing. It was fairly quiet and muted and dominated by the odd car passing by, but there were woodpigeons, collard doves, herring and lesser black-backed gulls, blue tit, wrens, the odd goldfinch, pied wagtail, coal tit and blackbird to make up some kind of avian soundscape. I also saw a squirrel climbing bins and fences along a street. Not the most memorable dawn chorus of the year, but I did it!