Waveney Bird Club

WBC Evening with Nightjars
Westleton Heath

29 June 2011

Leaders - Andrew Green and Stephen Howell

“Nightjarring” is a popular annual pilgrimage for many wildlife enthusiasts and this was to be the main theme for this evening’s walk at Westleton Heath. However, with three hours to go before dusk, a flying visit to Minsmere seemed to be good a way as any to pass away the time in the diming sunshine. It is quite easy to spend the whole day at Minsmere, because of the diversity of birds and habitat on offer, but we only had two and a half hours so decided to do a quick circuit around the scrape in an anti-clockwise direction, taking in a brief visit to each hide along the way. This meant quite a brisk walk around, so we headed towards West Hide through the wood fairly quickly and without stopping. Because of the time of day, hardly any passerines were heard calling.

Minsmere‘s Scrape hosts hundreds of pairs of breeding birds during the summer months, which meant that there is always plenty to look at and go through and this evening proved to be no exception. As usual, it was the geese, ducks and gulls that predominated, but there were also some choice waders and terns to be seen too. From West Hide, among the numerous Black-headed Gulls, there were breeding Avocets, Redshanks and Oystercatchers, a few Ruff, 20 Black-tailed Godwits, and two Snipe. On the pool on the south side of the hide there were a few Gadwall, Shoveler and Pochard and a juvenile Little Grebe, which was being fed by one of its parents, was such a pleasing sight. Undoubtedly, the most exotic form of wildlife on the reserve was the long-staying adult Greater Flamingo, which towered majestically over everything else present. Although this bird was a known escapee from Marwell Zoo in Hampshire, its striking pink plumage was very nice to see and this graceful bird was a welcome addition to our evening’s bird list.

Just before we reached South Hide, one of our members found a very interesting invertebrate in the form of a Great Diving Beetle larva, which was crossing the footpath in front of us by using its legs in a spring-jumping kind of way to propel itself forward until it reached the relative safety of the long grass. There were three Red Deer in the reedbed over towards Island Mere and four very tolerant Little Egrets on the edge of the pool in the “Tarpan field” that allowed superb views through our scopes. From South Hide, the find of the day was an immaculate breeding plumaged Roseate Tern, which was resting on one of the muddy islands close to the hide. Its wholly deep black bill with reddish base, very white plumage and longer tail streamers made it fairly easy to distinguish from the Common Terns that it was associating and everyone had the chance to pick out the finer points of this fairly rare and unusual Suffolk species. A Spotted Redshank put in a brief appearance and this long-legged beauty was arguably the best wader seen during the evening, although I’m sure that any big Avocet fans present might have disputed this. The highest count of Mediterranean Gulls also came from here and included eight adults and two second-year birds. There were also four Sandwich Terns.

As we walked along the top of the dunes towards East Hide we came across a Sparrowhawk, which flew up from the dunes carrying a prey item and we then spotted no less than eight Spoonbills actively feeding close into the bank. Spoonbills are always a pleasure to see as they display their snowy-white plumage and uniquely shaped bill and it was a bit surprising that we hadn’t seen these large birds before we were almost on top of them. Little Tern was another tern species was added to the day list when two flew north offshore and 12 Kittiwakes flying south added another gull species to the list. A flock of about 20 sea-ducks also flew south offshore, but although very distant were almost certainly Common Scoters.

As we were running low on time our visit to East was rather brief, but we did get much closer to the flamingo and scanning through the gulls got us a second-year Yellow-legged Gull – yet another Mediterranean specialty - our evening was beginning to feel more like a WBC trip abroad rather than an evening at Minsmere!! We didn’t have enough time to visit North Hide, so our last notable sightings logged before we had to leave were a very approachable Red Deer along the North Wall and a couple of Bearded Tits on North Marsh.

We arrived at Westleton Heath at just after 9.00 and, although temperatures were a couple of degrees cooler than recent nights, it was perfectly still and it seemed likely that we would score with Nightjars. We positioned ourselves a few hundred yards from the car park along the main track and it wasn’t long before the first of three Dartford Warblers began singing from the heather and gorse. Due to fading light, nothing but brief and relatively poor views were obtained of this species, although a singing male Stonechat was much more obliging and showed well, perched on top of the heather. The distant eerie calls of Stone Curlews could be heard as they prepared for a night’s foraging. This species is largely nocturnal, hence their large eyes which are ideal for spotting worms and other small invertebrates after dark. What sounded very much like a Red Deer stag bellowed briefly in the distance and a male Tawny Owl called out several times from the edge of the forest. By now it was starting to get dark and it was at just before 9.45 when the first Nightjar began to “churr”. We moved down the track to where the bird could be heard better and obtained a couple of brief flight views before another bird began to sing. Unfortunately, this second bird was even more elusive than the first and didn’t show at all, but we kept persevering. After about half an hour of nothing more than brief views of the birds, we slowly made our way back to the cars, stopping and scanning the whole time as we went. In total, we reckoned to have heard around seven or eight “churring” males and probably a couple of “chirruping” females as well, which was really quite impressive, but unfortunately, as far as this evening went, we never got those close up lingering views of the Nightjars which we hoped for. Even a vain and somewhat amusing half-hearted attempt with the infamous waving of white hankies made no difference to proceedings!

“Nightjarring” is all about atmosphere though and such an evocative and haunting sound of the night meant that no-one went away disappointed. With all the other forms of wildlife seen, heard and enjoyed throughout the evening, it was safe to say that our evening with Nightjars overall, combined with a superb walk around Minsmere, had been a tremendous success.

Stephen Howell