Our original plan for this weekend was to visit Norfolk to see swallowtail butterflies but as they have had an early season and we could not be confident of sightings we decided to visit the RSPB reserve at Minsmere which I've never been to before.
After an uneventful two hour car journey we reached Minsmere at 10am with clear blue skies and a warm sunshine. Leaving the visitor centre we spent some time watching a colony of sand martins using a nesting bank, before heading off to the hides. The gravel islands on the coast trail held various gulls as well as common and sandwich terns with a few waders present e.g oyster catchers and lapwings.We could feel the brisk wind on oud faces whilst it whipped up waves on the sea.
Passing the reed beds we listened out for bearded tits but they proved elusive now their first broods have fledged. However at the bittern hide we had scarcely entered when a bittern did a fly past in front of the hide. This was the first of a few flights over the next ten minutes. Squeezing into a seat at the right hand corner we saw a kingfisher fly along the water channel before returning to settle on a perch in the shelter of the ditch below us. Beyond us we could see a couple of marsh harriers hunting over the reedbeds.
Other hides yielded nothing new but we did spot some dragonflies including a green eyed norfolk hawker which was busy patrolling a ditch alongside the path.
Discovering that silver studded blue butterflies could be found on neighboutring heath we decided to try and incorporate a visit to a Dunwich Hesth. owned by the NT. It was only a short visit, and most of the heather seemed to have gone over, but eventually, having made a circular walk, I spotted three rather worn butterflies on a clump of heather which was still in flower, only fifty yards or so from the carpark. I should add though that we also saw an adder slither quickly across the path in front of us, a creature I'd not seen in the wild before.
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