Minsmere

1 March 2012

Jan has fancied going to Minsmere for some time now so yesterday we were at 6am (middle of the night for us!), and off we went at around 7am with Jan at the wheel.  The way we work things is that whoever is sat in the front passenger seat does the birding and keeps the list, so the job fell to me.  There was little to do really seeing as we had a fairly thick fog on the way down the A14 until we arrived at the Little Chef just after the A14 joins the A11 but I still get to list woodpigeon and magpie.  Two slices of toast and a cuppa later we were on our way again with me at the wheel.  The birds started to show up then with Jan adding crow, rook, kestrel (the only raptor we saw all day), magpie, pheasant, jackdaw, greater black backed gull, skylark, black bird.  Things started to turn a little grey when we arrived at the village of Westleton; the road through it was closed because it was being resurfaced. 

I don't know if you aware of it but Minsmere is having a lot of dosh spent on it at the moment.  The visitor centre is being revamped and a lot of other bits n bobs too.  They think it will be ready towards the end of this month.  Anyway, off we went to see what we could see.  Our scooters are not very heavy nor are them they all that comfortable on rough surfaces so being shaken up a lot on the paths at bird reserves is nothing new to us.  Out biggest disappointment came fairly quickly when we tried to get along the North Wall.  There was no way our scooters was going to work on the soft sand along there.  So we had to head back and start again after pushing, pulling and finally having to walk the scooters back to a decent (in the loosest of terms), path.  Not only that, but one of my batteries failed while we tried getting along the wall.  I'm hoping it's just the fuse that's gone otherwise we need to find nearly £200 for a new set up.  However, before we left the North Wall we did get two birds, a red throated diver, which turned out to be a life tick and greater blacked backed gull too.  So it wasn't a total wash out up there.

I was really disappointed by not being able to get along North Wall so it's quite likely that I missed any birds that might have shown as we made our way towards the North Hide.  There was a lot of birds there in the Scrape.  However, I was starting to struggle again, but this time with sun directly in my eyes.  We still get a good few birds there though.  After maybe 20 minutes we made our way along to the West hide - much better indeed and we could see a lot better too without having to squint into the sun.  Eventually we headed off to the South Hide.  We decided to try go and have a look at the Sluice in case there was anything decent there; there wasn't.  One look at the bank up towards the North Wall and we knew the scooter wouldn't make that at all.  So we headed off to get to the Bittern Hide.

I suggested to Jan on the way that after that one we go back to the car for lunch.  Jan then realized that we had forgotten to pack out butties.  Not only that but my scooter was getting slower and slower and I was getting concerned that it wouldn't make it back the temporary visitor centre, let alone to the Bittern Hide and then back to the centre.  So we cut it and headed straight back the centre where we bought lunch.

So, in one way or another we didn't have the best of days, yet we still enjoyed being out and about.  Our list from Minsmere was OK too, even with our limitations.  We got, chaffinch, black headed gull, greater black backed gull, blackbird, red throated diver, lapwing, pintail, Canada goose, barnacle goose, graylag goose, magpie, white fronted goose, blue tit, long tailed goose, wren, goldfinch, great tits, pheasant, shoveller, whooper swan, avocet, coot, mallard, snipe, starling, shellduck, tufted duck, gadwall, redshank, teal, common sandpiper, mute swan, robin, collared dove, grey partridge, moorhen; which actually added 5 our year's list with one being a lifer. 

Things picked up a lot when we were driving away though.  We went a different route and I saw a pub sign I don't have in my photo collection, The Ell's foot it was called, and Adnams pub.  We stooped to get a shot of the sign but decided we needed a pint.  I had a pint of Gunhill, Jan had her usual Smirnoff Ice.  Not a bad pint in a so-so pub be we were ready for it.  We will of course go back the Minsmere and now that we know about not being able to do the North Wall, we have a much better day I'm sure ;-)))