Birding Braunie

Remarkably, the only place I haven’t been to is the pub. Saturday’s weather had been glorious and now it was Sunday morning and BST and I was greeted by thick fog. As you can imagine, fog isn’t that clever when you want to watch birds. But I knew the veil of pea soup would lift and burn away as the morning sun warmed the air. In the meantime, I thought it would be better to walk along the river path towards the Concrete Barges – something I hadn’t done for a few years. Concrete Barges There wasn’t much to see on the 2.5 mile walk to the Barges. Aveley Bay was dotted with Shelduck , Redshank and Black-headed Gulls . On the river, Teal and a few Cormorants could be seen. On the path itself, a couple of Linnets and some singing Dunnock s and Skylarks kept me company. Iceland Gull Now I don’t know if you know this but in the past 3-4 months, there has been a higher than usual influx of white-winged gulls. Usually it’s the very large Glaucous Gull that is seen most regul...

I know life begins at forty but what happens at fifty? Well I can tell you, nothing bad. Okay, it’s only been one day but what a day it was. Regular readers of this blog will know that I like an early morning wander along the seawall at South Fambridge. So at 7.30am with the sun warming up the chilly early morning air, I took the usual route west. There wasn’t much about. A few skylarks were singing somewhere up in the heavens (not long for me now) and a couple of corn buntings played birds on a wire. Along the river, Brent geese were collecting and getting ready to leave these shores for the summer and the usual waders, oystercatchers, curlews and redshanks added the atmospherics with their echoing calls. On the way back, a few reed buntings flitted about in the narrow reeds that margin the fine strips of water that run parallel to the path. Just before you get to the entrance to the bridleway, there are a few old buildings that have seen better days. There were robins, dunnocks, bl...

Spring has arrived. The garden is on the verge of bursting out in blooms of Cherry and Apple blossoms, Daffodils, Camellias and Bluebells. But it’s not what you see that tells you spring is here, oh no, it’s the birds or to be exact, the dawn chorus. For the lucky ones, this heralds in the spring and is a joy to listen to and doesn’t require covering you head with the pillow because it woke you up. Because the weather was so nice, I decided to take a leisurely trip down to Rainham. Although spring has arrived, Rainham still seems to have traces of winter stubbornly refusing to leave. With a 2nd winter Iceland Gull and a single snow bunting around, it was an ideal place to catch a few lingering winter birds as well as catch up with some early spring ones. As with every trip here, I always start with a walk along the Thames path. Always a chance of wheatear or whinchat but not today. Instead, I came across about three water pipit s. The Thames foreshore has always been good for these...