Birding Braunie

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...

It’s called the Bittern Watchpoint or more precisely, the Bittern Information Point. It’s not the Water Rail watchpoint or the Sparrowhawk info-point, even less the Cormorant watchpoint. Thing is, the Bittern is a bit special; not every nature reserve has them; in fact, most don’t. The Lee Valley has for years played host to wintering bittern and the park authority recognised the importance of encouraging and attracting as many of these scarce and appealing birds that it could. The reed beds have been carefully managed and now there are healthy swathes of reed any discerning bittern would be happy to hide in – and can they hide. Even though there have been roost counts of up to three bittern in the park (this is about half of what we had last year but that coincides with a mild winter across northern Europe) sighting had been few and far between for a few weeks at Fishers Green, home to the Bittern Watchpoint. Plenty of Smew, Goosander and Water Rail but only glimpses of Bittern. ...