Space-Time

In order to better myself and following my cinema visit to see The Theory of Everything and getting my nose stuck into Steven Hawkings A Brief History of Time, I managed to discover the complete formula that makes our universe make sense – birding. Somehow and with the aid of a fortuitous worm hole, I managed to bend time and get some serious birding in this week.

So a visit to Rainham Centauri.

Landing Craft.
With a landscape not dissimilar to the icy moon Europa, I found myself, alone, at Rainham. To be fair, the mother craft that is the visitor centre did open its lower hatch with a burst of dry ice and a figure almost human in the shape of HV-1 did invite me in with a pointing finger but I declined.

I took the opportunity to have a scan around the car park area and flushed a little green monster in the shape of a Green Woodpecker.

Little Green Man
Instead, I chose to traverse the rugged terrain of the the river path in search of life in the shape of Water Pipits and other undiscovered species.


Three Brent Geese grazed along side a flock of Canada Geese. There had been three White-fronts the previous day but alas, they had disappeared into a black hole.

Lift off
There were swarms of gulls over the tip; imagine one of those big space battles in Star Wars and you’ll get the picture. One or two Snipe flew out of cover and across the Thames as I progressed towards the barges. No sighting of any Water Pipits but plenty of Stonechats along the fencing along with Meadow Pipits.







Rather than go back on myself, I did the loop that brought me round to the dark side and a walk along New Tank Road where there was a Kestrel keenly watching for food from its high vantage point. Eventually I made it to Serin Mound. No Serins but loads of Linnets and Goldfinches. On the Marsh, many Lapwings and more gulls.



Not a UFO but a Pheasant.
A quick bite to eat in the RSPB cafe and then a walk around the reserve.

Lapwings

Little Egret

Little Egret

Shoveler

Pintail
From Rainham, I travelled at the speed of light or marginally under it in light of the speed cameras on the A13, and headed off to the place I like to call mission control in the Lee Valley.

I touched down amazingly beside the Bittern Watchpoint and looked for signs of life.
Bittern
Needless to say, the Bittern was playing hard to get which has been the norm this year. But a nice find were a pair of Bullfinches close to the Stubbins Hall Lane car park.

Bullfinch
Along the channel beside Walton’s Walk, a pair of Goosanders hung around long enough to get some attention from the camera.

Drake Goosander

Redhead Goosander
Well that was a brief history of my day. It’s only taken me a light year to blog about it.

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