Eurasian Bittern - Botaurus Stellari
No Summer is complete without a visit to Minsmere, the RSPB's flagship reserve on the Suffolk coast. The reserve has a huge reedbed that is home to several pairs of Bittern. There are only 40-50 pairs of breeding Bittern mostly concentrated in East Anglia, the Somerset Levels and Lancashire. Each pair requires a huge area of reedbed to support them. They mostly feed on frogs and fish.
The best chance you have to see the birds who are usually secreted away in the reeds is when they fly across the reeds to deliver food to young or to return to a roosting spot. At any point during the Summer if you are patient and sit in either the Island or Bitten hides at the reserve and watch carefully you will eventually be rewarded with the site of a Bittern in flight. All I could manage on this occasion was this long range shot. The photograph below gives you an idea of the range at which I was taking the pictures so the bird was probably the better part of 6-800m away.
Eurasian Bittern, Botaurus Stellarus
Minsmere, Suffolk
August 2012
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