In June 2024 we spent a week in Suffolk on the east coast of England staying in self catering accommodation at Dingle Marsh Barns on the outskirts of the historic village of Dunwich. This was a very convenient location for a number of excellent birding sites including Dunwich Heath, RSPB Minsmere and Orford Ness.
One of our target birds for the trip was the Dartford Warbler, which is found on heathland such as Dunwich Heath. However, the birds are not easy to see as they often stay low down in the heather and it requires considerable patience to get good photographs of the birds. We made two trips to the heath to see the Dartford Warblers. On the first we had a couple of fleeting sightings of the birds, although they didn’t stay stationary long enough to get good photographs. The second visit was much more successful and, thanks to other birders looking for them, we found where several were located on that day. After waiting for them to perch on top of the heather, we got some reasonable, although slightly distant, photographs.
Throughout our visits to the heath Skylarks could be heard as they hovered high in the air. Although very vocal, they were often hard to see but they did give photo opportunities when they landed on the top of the isolated bushes. Another common bird we saw on Dunwich Heath was the Linnet.
Minsmere is one of the RSPB’s premier reserves providing an excellent mix of woodland trails, a stretch of beachfront and hides that overlook scrapes and areas of water. On this trip we made four visits to Minsmere at different times of day, which gave us good light across different parts of the reserve.
A major attraction at Minsmere is the Great Bitterns, which are best seen from the aptly named Bittern Hide. This overlooks an area of reeds where bitterns are almost always present, although they are usually deep within the reeds and only occasionally lift their heads into the open where they can be seen from the hide. On our final visit, we saw one bittern that had created a vantage point by gathering together a bunch of reeds. This can be seen in the rightmost photograph below.
The Bittern Hide faces south making photography in the middle of the day very difficult, but a visit in the evening was quite productive and we photographed a good range of birds in the water in front of the hide, with the highlight being the Pied Avocets.
At Minsmere a pair of Ring-necked Pheasant seem to have taken up residence close to the carpark near the entrance to the visitor centre. We saw then each evening as we headed back to our car.
