Birding Braunie

Hmmm? I guess you can see a pattern forming here can’t you? And you’d be right too. Writing a blog was easy when I only ventured out once or twice a month birding but now, as a freelance chappie, I find I have quite a few pockets of time in my week and rather than watch Antiques Road Trip or other such banal TV or even do any housework, I find myself suddenly in a local nature reserve asking myself 'How did I get here?' So my point is, I would have to use the pockets of spare time I have, to write the blogs that record the events of that spare time and thus, I wouldn’t have any spare time to write about anything other than writing non-existent blogs! See? So I save them up for moments like this. The month kicked off in the Lee Valley on a dark mid-morning (a feature of most of my ventures out) and a 2 hour walk around the south part of Fishers Green covering Hooks Marsh and Hall Marsh. I had a low-flying Red Kite over Hooks but failed to focus the telephoto on it. My lens,...

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...