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,...

Most birders love Jan 1st. It’s the day we all turn over that page and start our new list for the year. We all have resolutions to increase that list: better it from the previous year: plan those trips with more determination to succeed. I couldn’t chose my trip. It was decided the minute I volunteered to man the information point at the Lee Valley. I love it. I prefer it when the sun shines and unfortunately, the sun was nursing a huge hangover from the previous nights celebrations. In its place we had driving rain, blustery winds and a chill that went straight to the depths of your damp bones. A rather soggy goose field Through rain-splattered glasses I saw Redwings and Fieldfares sharing a ploughed field with about 20 Blackbirds and a pair of Song Thrushes. Jays and Magpies squabbled over winter food and huge Great Black-backed Gulls joined Lesser Black-backs and black-headed Gulls wheeling under the charcoal sky. Most of the park’s species of duck were in attendance. Wige...

I thought it might be nice to Wallasea Island where the RSPB along with Crossrail have embarked on an impressive venture known as the Wild Coast project. The project is huge but they are slowly but surely sculpting an impressive wetland and salt marsh landscape using dumper truck after dumper truck of earth taken from the Crossrail tunnelling currently boring its way through the earth while at the same time, allowing the sea to flood into it, thus creating a natural biodiverse environment that will take until 2019 to complete. The birds don’t seem to mind all this work going on and are largely undisturbed by it anyway. On the seaward side, Shelduck were counted at around 120 birds. lapwing about 450 and dark-bellied Brent Geese 240. Dunlin 135, Black-tailed Godwit 35, Ringed Plovers 20+. On the land a flock of 20 Skylark were of note as well as a pair of Stonechat in the Wild Bird Cover. This area by the car park also had a pair of Marsh Harriers but no Hen Harriers. It’s goin...