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.