Winter Wonderland at Minsmere - 12/2/2017

What a glorious day to go birding. A bitter easterly wind, straight from Siberia, pounded the coast as I took to Minsmere. It was so cold it really felt like my face was about to turn to ice, break off and shatter on the ground.
But then that's one of the pleasures of bird watching in winter. And thankfully it also keeps the people away.
As far as birding goes, today was OK. Pride of place goes to the SMEW. There were a pair present, including a beautiful male, which with its stark monochromatic plumage of white and black makes it an outstanding bird to see. They were on a small pool just to the edge of the scrape proper and were viewable from a mound where a mini twitch had assembled.

Male Smew (not my image) >>>>>>>>


Today I mainly concentrated on the scrape, with limited time available. The scrape is a area of brackish shallow water just in from the sea, and with its islands, it attracts thousands of birds to nest there, the most famous being AVOCETS.
But in the freezing winter things are different. For one its a lot quieter, without the squawking of many birds nesting so close together, it becomes the realm of winter ducks. Today it seems that the scrape had some management work done, so due to  disturbance there weren't many ducks about. I usually expect to see several thousand birds, but today they numbered in the low hundreds. There were few waders about, but then there aren't usually many in winter; there were several GODWITS & REDSHANKS, and singles of CURLEW, RINGED PLOVER and TURNSTONE.

This is what most of the birds were doing today - sleeping

 



The sea was extremely rough, with thousands of white horses pounding the beach. Alas this was not the best conditions to see birds in. What I did see were five GANNETS heading north, I think the first I've seen in February, and small numbers of BRENT GEESE heading south.
Further along the south levels, an area of wet grassland, were very dry, with little flooding on the grasslands, and as a result there wasn't much there either.
Last thing to report - a GREAT WHITE EGRET was present in the pools behind west hide, which is the frist record I've had for the reserve, although I expect to see it more often, as its population is on the rise in this country.
So an alright day, but with these mild winters, although its easier to get out and about in, attracts less of the scarcer birds, which the cold weather usually pushes in. But we shall see. Bring on Spring I say.