Do you ever do something and then wish you hadn’t? The red deer viewpoint on Westleton Heath has been a bit like that. But it has been so popular that we’re glad we did organise it, despite the subsequent hassle that it has caused!
The viewpoint attracted an incredible 1100 people over the three evenings, and all went away happy, even when the fog rolled in and hid the deer. Mind you, their deep bellowing will have been even more impressive with zero visibility. The staff and volunteers on duty coped admirably, given that we had been expecting about 100 people per evening! We’ve drafted in extra staff and volunteers for this weekend as the weather forecast is good again.
Just after I posted my last entry, I took Minsmere’s Wildlife Explorers group out looking for footprints. Not surprisingly, we found a good supply of red deer tracks, allowing them to take plaster casts of the hoof prints. Incredibly, one group of four deer allowed us to approach to within a few metres – even with 18 excitable children and their parents. Just another case of Minsmere’s wildlife becoming unusually confiding.
An even better find on this event was a small whitish dropping, found by one parent. This proved to be a green woodpecker dropping. Looking carefully at it, we were able to see the remains of ants – and the nearby holes in the ground indicated where the woodpecker had been probing for them. It just shows what you can find when you start looking carefully at the ground!
Of course, there’s plenty of birds to see here too. The star attraction for the last few weeks has been a colour-ringed great white egret. This bird was ringed as a chick in northern France this summer, and seems to be quite at home in Minsmere’s reedbed – often feeding alongside a grey heron and little egret at Island Mere.