Finders-in-the-Field: Sooty Tern, RSPB Minsmere, July 2020
I’ve been enjoying a love affair for 45 years. It was love at first sight. From my first visit to RSPB Minsmere in spring 1975 I’ve been hooked. Beguiled, bewitched, besotted. Hopelessly devoted.
But, like all love affairs, the passion sometimes wears a bit thin. I’m very well aware that I am far luckier than most birders in that I live near such a wondrous wildlife site, but sometimes the flame just burns a little less brightly.
With lockdown cruelly cutting the always enjoyable camaraderie shared by locals and visitors alike, drought conditions taking their toll, a seemingly year-on-year decline in once-common species and precious few surprise birds to lift the spirits, I’d had a difficult spring at the grand old place. I try not to take any of the reserve’s undoubted treasures for granted, but even so I admit that my virtually daily trudges around the Scrape were getting to feel a bit samey.
Come July, things started to look up, with a few more visitors venturing out and wader passage increasing. Come July 8, things exploded into a frenzied fireball of excitement.
At 11.07am, during a pleasant chat on the public viewing platform overlooking the reserve’s South Scrape with visitors Jim and Jeanne Collinson, from Nottinghamshire, I noticed a bird flying towards us from near the ruins of the old Leiston Abbey. It simply did not add up. Its rakish silhouette and consummate grace reminded me of a Long-tailed Skua, but I could see a white forehead, white underwing surfaces and a white breast. Above South Hide the bird jinked eastwards and flew above the South Scrape fence line towards Minsmere Sluice. The penny dropped. It was a tern. With very dark upperparts. Surely not? Surely it couldn’t be? It was.
At this range and with these views I erred on the side of caution ( Bridled or Sooty, although I strongly suspected the latter) but Jim and Jeanne probably didn’t think much caution was being exhibited when I shouted to them that they must, just must, get onto this bird. They did indeed and jaws dropped as it flew, having lost height, over the sluice and turned south to head, just above the dunes, towards Sizewell.
Many years ago, while seawatching alone at nearby Southwold, I saw what I am still 99% convinced was a Bridled Tern heading south. I wasn’t confident enough to submit that one - it remains one that got away - and I feared I might well suffer the same fate with this bird.
A few minutes before this bombshell event, Robin Harvey and Nick Forster of the RSPB’s Minsmere team had joined us briefly on the platform, but had now left. I tried to phone Robin - no reply. I contacted Adam Rowlands, the RSPB’s Suffolk manager, and my great friend Richard Drew who lives nearby and breathlessly explained to both what had just transpired. I messaged the local Clubbers Nature News WhatsApp group, of which I am a member, to sound the alarm and suggest that Sizewell might be worth a visit. Straight away.
A run, or stagger, back to the Minsmere car park - via the toilets thanks to a badly timed but desperately urgent requirement - was followed by a short but stress-filled drive to Sizewell. A check of the phone on arrival and bingo! Richard had messaged Clubbers to say it was indeed a Sooty and it was flying around the old Sizewell A nuclear power station’s disused inflow and outflow rigs just offshore.
For about 100 birders who converged on Sizewell with impressive speed, the exquisite bird - destined to become Suffolk’s fourth record and Minsmere’s third - put on a spell-binding performance. It somewhat incongruously landed several times on the ugly, rusting, Kittiwake-covered rigs. It even called loudly and gratingly a few times. It’s Long-tailed Skua-like appearance and stunning, stark, black-and-white beauty was remarked upon by several observers before it flew off south and was lost to view just before 1.00pm. For the late-arriving birders there were the usual slightly embarrassed commiserations and for some their disappointment was perhaps offset by the excellent and cleverly named Sizewell Tea cafe offering “Sooty Special” bacon baps and chips at £5 a time.
For me, all those spring hours at Minsmere that seemed a little samey were rewarded. I won’t be doing any Victor Meldrew grumpiness again for a while. The flame of love is rekindled. The passion that never really went away, but just simply subsided a little, is burning as brightly as ever.
John Grant
13 July 2020
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