Acoustics...

Had another very enjoyable day at Minsmere yesterday. It wasn’t really a whole day, but I was settled into the Bittern Hide by 7am, so it just felt like a whole day. I enjoyed the first two hours best, when you could feel you had the reserve to yourself. Actually, I felt like an intruder. There were things going on around the salt-flats that didn’t really need an audience.

I spent a bit of time away from the wetlands, spotting blackcaps and whitethroats in full song. Birdsong, in May, seems amplified: not an echo, but a doubling of effort and result. The acoustics have changed somehow; it’s like hearing birdsong in the vaulted space of a cathedral, instead of an oak woodland. I saw - and heard - sedge warblers, perched on a single reed-stem and swaying in the breeze. Reed Buntings too… and stonechats… and linnets… and wheatears. But no nightingales…

Minsmere...

Scallop sculpture on the beach at Aldeburgh...