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This week at Minsmere we’ve been bittern and marsh harrier watching, as well as carrying out our first bearded tit survey of the year (as well as my first ever!). The bittern watch revealed slightly more activity than in previous weeks with a few chases of females by males being seen but no...

Minsmere has had a bit of purple patch in the last week or so, although you had to be quick to catcha glimpse of all our unusual visitors. Typically, I missed them all. The first week of May saw sightings of two rare herons in the reedbed: purple heron and two great white egrets. Typically, they were...

Early on Saturday morning I arrived at Minsmere to lead the first of our regular spring dawn chorus guided walks. It was crystal clear night with a huge full moon casting shadows over the reserve. As we met at 4 am the nightingale at the car park entrance could already be heard, and the first bittern...

It's been lovely to have a couple of short strolls around parts of Minsmere this week. The warm sunshine has put a real spring in my step, and it really feels like the seasons have changed at last (especially after a week in up to a foot of snow in Estonia earlier this month!) The bumblebees have...

Two species of duck are stealing the show at present: two species that are rarely seen on the same day in the UK. Smews have featured heavily in our sightings blogs for the last three months. We'd usually expect the last ones to be leaving Minsmere in mid March, but the continued cold weather...

It's been a real cornucopia of weather since my last blog, with few signs of the coming spring. The weekend saw some of the wettest weather we've had for may years, followed by a couple of days of snow, more rain, strong north-easterly winds and eventually a little bit of sunshine today. The...

Last Wednesday when I had a look on the Scrape at lunchtime there was still a very wintry theme with ducks dominating include a cracking drake smew with two females. The only waders in sight were a few lapwings and a couple of redshanks. Today the scene was very different. I could tell even before...

It seems hard to believe that little over a week ago we had several centimetres of snow and nightime tempertures plummeting below minus five. Daytime temperatures are now exceeding ten degrees - it was a positively balmy 13 degrees Centigrade yesterday, although the gale force wind made it feel cooler...

After the closure due to snow, it's been great to be back at Minsmere and enjoying some of the wonderful winter wildlife on show over the last couple of days. The ice and snow can be a hardship for some species. We try to give some of our reedbed species a helping hand in these conditions by putting...