South Essex Marshes and Canvey Island (19/11/11)

Yesterday my dad took me to South Essex Marshes for a nice trip. The trip did not revolve around birding but it was a part of it we started at the RSPB reserve and got a key for the hide and went there for maybe half an hour. In the hide I saw a Green Sandpiper, a Buzzard and heard a Bearded Tit. Unfortunately I did not stay in the hide long enough to see one. We went back to the visitors centre and gave back the key before we went on a nice long walk around the marshes. At this point I did not do much birding but at one point I saw a Goosander. Otherwise I mainly just looked at the scenery and the archeology as the sit had many WW2 archeological sites around it. After maybe 2 or 3 hours we left to go the Canvey Island were we went to a beach. We walked along the beach but there was not much to be seen other than Common Gulls, Herring Gulls and Black-headed Gulls. I occasionally found a mud pit with Oystercatchers, Curlews and Redshanks wading in them. This was until we found an amazing place for waders I looked for no more than 10 seconds before finding some Sanderling all together there were c. 100+ on the beach I walked to a better viewing point to look at them more closely were I also saw some Ringed Plovers and Turnstone and then suddenly 3 Dark-bellied Brent Geese flew over me and landed. The marsh looked really good for other waders to but unfortunately I did not have a scope so I was unable to identify some waders which were very far away and another factor against me was the light because by now the sun was setting which meant I could only see silhouettes so we decided to go back to the car on the way a managed to obtain some pictures of the sun setting and I also saw a flock of waders fly past which I was unable to identify because of the light.

Behind RSSKL

Today I went for a walk with my brother behind the RSSKL. We were walking for about 2 minutes and then we saw a flock of 8+ Linnets they flow in front of us until they landed not more than 10m away. we tried finding them through the scope so as to look at there plumage. While we were watching them we also heard a Great Spotted Woodpecker and saw a skylark. We went on seeing a few birds fly over and then we saw a whole flock of up to 40 Redwings, Fieldfares, and Starlings. Later in the same field we also saw a flock of 14 Goldfinches which also landed and allowed us to take a closer look at them through the scope. We carried on and saw some Woodpigeons in fairly large flocks just sitting around not doing much. When we got to another field we suddenly heard a Meadow Pipit flying over we looked around but just could not find it later another one flow in our field of vision and we could tell it was Meadow Pipit by its call. In the same field we saw some more Woodpigeons and we wanted to count them so we set up the scope to get a accurate number. We carried on scanning and my brother found a Red Kite sitting in a dead tree there was also a Rook which sat next to it most of the time. The way back was not as eventful.

Wilstone Reservoirs (a long time ago)

Sorry that I haven't written on my blog for so long but i was on a school trip to Devon for about 2 weeks. After that I could not really be bothered to write any thing but any way at Wilstone I saw some Gadwall, Pintail, Water Pipit and a flock of golden plovers.