Minsmere: birds and puffballs

I visited Minsmere on August 9th. Probably not the best month to go - but a lovely sunny day. I spent a few hours there - not ever having been before and was impressed both by the reserve and the area and the helpful advice and information from the volunteer wardens/helpers. I did get to see some Marsh Harriers - there were three flying that were visible from one of the hides, and the others in the hide were able to tell us more about them - that one was a young male etc. They were not particularly close but we had good clear views and saw two of them them passing prey to each other during the flight.

Not a good time to see bitterns as the reeds are so high, but I did look for possible sights of birds flying over - but no luck. I also got to see avocets which I have never seen before - so much smaller than I had imagined! And the same goes for the ruff I saw. It's odd how you build up a picture of a bird in your mind and then they are rather different. I'm sure this is the case for people with puffins - which I had seen as a child in Wales so knew they were small - but you always forget just how small.

Other birds around included a godwit (black tailed); lapwings; a sandpiper which the volunteers were excited about as they thought it might be a wood sandpiper. (I would not have known it was a sandpiper myself - I'm afraid that the brown waders all look a bit similar.........); oystercatchers and various ducks. Walking to the reserve from Dunwich where we were staying took us along the beach and past all the sandmartin nests that are in the cliffs there.

An exciting non animal find that we were unable to do anything with was a field with several (yes several!) puffballs in - so large that for a moment we wondered if they were sheep. However, unfortunately there was no way to get into the field so sadly, we weren't able to gather the puffballs.