Marshide and memories of Minsmere

In 1980 I visited Minsmere in Suffolk with my Dad, in the hope of seeing Avocets for the first time, based on information gleened from John Gooders book "Where to watch birds". We stayed in Walberswick, and at the time it seemed a remote and wild place and it was a great adventure. We achieved our goal, and had the added bonus of also seeing our first Spoonbill, a bird I never expected to see. It was all very much a Richard Perry "At the turn of the tide" experience. Over the following years if ever I wanted to see Avocets I needed to follow pretty much the same routine, and a visit to East Anglia was required.

My first Avocet in North West England was at Frodsham in 1985, followed by one at Heswall in 1994 and then two at Seaforth in 1998. Three sightings of four Avocets in the North West in my first 28 years birding! By 2003 they were breeding at Marshside, Martin Mere and Leighton Moss. Today there were 60 Avocets at Marshside.

There was just one Spoonbill at Marshside today, yet considering that back in 1980 Spoonbills hadn't bred in the UK for 400 years, their rise has been equally spectacular, and they now breed in Norfolk in good numbers, though the initial break through was here in the North West.

When I arrived at Marshside the bird hadn't been seen, so I decided to walk north up the road and very soon spotted the Spoonbill feeding in a ditch. Fortunately it eventually came quite close and I sat there alone on the bank, basking in the early spring sunshine, and watching this amazing, tropical looking bird feeding at close quarters. Just to remind me that I was actually at Southport, a flock of 1000 Pink-footed Geese flew over and I lay back for a moment and watched them fly across the bright blue sky, whilst on the marsh, a Merlin perched on a log, waiting its moment.

It's always interesting watching Spoonbills feed. Their bill is obviously highly evolved to allow them to catch prey, yet whoever designed it seems to have forgotton that the bird needs to swallow the prey once caught. Today I watched the bird catch at least a couple of sticklebacks, and the process of moving the fish from the tip of its spatula bill to it's mouth seemed fairly tortuous to me. I once watched a Spoonbill eat an eel, but only after the eel had coiled itself around the birds bill for about 20 minutes.

Year 149 (Avocet, Spoonbill)


Marshside with Blackpool behind. In the foreground a little Egret, whose rise has been even more meteoric than either Avocet or Spoonbill, but that's a story for another day......