Great Skua at Rainham - In which everything turns out better than expected.

News broke yesterday of a great skua at Rainham. I didn't read this, or any other bird news, until early evening and so wasted pleasantly passed my afternoon in the cinema watching Sherlock Holmes (not at all bad). True, I was considerably annoyed, but I wasn't the only one who managed to miss out. Not being one to miss the chance of a tick I assumed Mr Lethbridge would end up at Rainham first thing, so I rang him mid morning to check the news. Nothing, but promising conditions.

At this point I weighed up my options: what I wanted to happen vs what I expected to happen, and then looked at how much difference there was between the two. Kind of a birding "cost/benefit" analysis, and I won't lie, it didn't look good. The bird might have gone, it might have come back and then left, I might get there late, or too early and have to leave, or not get a lift and miss it because the train is late, etc. Too many variables. Usually this exercise in hopes vs expectations leads me to set the bar at what I perceive to be an ambitious yet achievable height, then later, when expectations turn into reality I can realise how much I underestimated my ability to fail. Sometimes, in anticipation of this underestimation I won't bother to leave the house but today, it all worked out well. Very well, in fact.

Just as we were ready to leave Romford the phone rang to say the bird had reappeared. It was looking good. When we arrived the bird had disappeared up to Aveley Bay, but just about every other seabird I've seen at Rainham on a falling tide does the same loop - it'll drift down from Coldharbour to the bridge, fly back up to Coldharbour and repeat. We weren't worried, and sure enough inside five minutes I found the skua drifting downriver close to the shore. Decent views were had by all from the warmth of the centre, cup of tea in hand. Except the people on the balcony. They were cold, and probably tea-less. After drifting down it headed upriver taking a pass at a couple of gulls on the way, the girl and I refound it again sitting in Aveley Bay. It disappeared out of view just as more company arrived - ticked, just...


If the photos were better I'd compare it to this arctic skua last autumn, in exactly the same place in Aveley Bay... But they're not. Conditions were, er, shite. Still, I'm in a great mood. Perfect twitch, after a good driving lesson this morning. Rain? Pfft.


Possibly the easiest and most comfortable twitch ever.

Good birds? At Rainham? What?

I've been somewhat tardy with the posting of late, but that's not to suggest that I haven't seen and done enough to warrant a couple of badly-written, poorly illustrated rants scattered liberally with some of the English language's finest expletives.

I've been to Rainham a couple of times in the last few days and it's actually been good, with birds and people and everything. Even not finding what I wanted has been fun - or maybe I've just been in a better mood recently. Not finding a caspian on the targets was compensated by yellow-leggeds and a female marsh harrier. For such a big bird she did a good line in disappearing - as soon as I'd got the bins on her she'd fucked off. Not finding penduline tits ended in a pair of bearded tits over from the railway which dropped in to the reeds never to be seen again, and not finding short-eared owls ended in a pair of common buzzards low over Wennington/Aveley. Even not finding serins on that fucking mound was ok, where I instead found peregrines and a moon. The latter was far more impressive - I can't believe I've never bothered to scope up the moon...Other goodies found while not finding rare things included pintails and a greatspot in the woods.


I also bought this:


It's very good. Buy it. I settled on the hardback as it was available sooner (more delays?) and gives me a book to keep home while continuing to use the old one in the field. Don't see the point in ruining loving to death another £20 book when 99% of the book is still perfectly relevant.

There have been other interesting happenings recently, but I can't be arsed to remember and write about them just now. I'm busy. I've just started a new game on Dwarf Fortress called "WinterHole the Festive Fortress of Failure" and already lost my fisherdwarf to a deadly carp attack, so duty calls. How are they going to eat now?

Seriously, best computer game ever made, ever.

Spring is here.

And I have evidence to prove it.

1: There is no longer any snow. Snow melts in spring.

2: The 50 strong redwing flock present in/around the garden has left, presumably to go back to their breeding grounds. Why else would they leave? The garden is very nice, and we even have some berries somewhere. See figs. 1 and 2.

Fig1. Redwings, taken the other day.

Fig 2, No redwings, taken today.

3: The great tits in the garden have been trying out the nestboxes and birds only nest in spring.

4: I heard a greatspot drumming in Raphael Park the other day.

5: There are blackcaps in my garden - see fig. 3.
5.1: They're only summer visitors, right? I have a birdbook right here, written in the 70s that states that as fact.
5.2: That's evidence of early migration due to climate change, that is.
5.3: We had two males and a female yesterday. I can only assume that these two males were competing for her. There is no other reason they would be in such a group.

Fig 3. Insectivorous summer visitor in the spring sun.

6: The bluetits and a single great tit have found my windowfeeder, finally - see fig. 4. They clearly don't like it but use it anyway - evidence that they have a brood on the go somewhere and are feeding in new places to get enough food.

Fig. 4. Blue tit feeding. Not fast, frantic action, indicating young back at the nest. Also note, no snow.

7: Oh, and apparently the climate is fucked and spring is getting earlier each year. This year is just a little ahead of the curve. See graph 1.

Graph 1: I rigorously researched all the numbers needed for this graph. Or at least for the years along the bottom, anyway.

8: That's all I've got.

I think you'll agree that this is pretty incontrovertable evidence. 8 points of rock hard scientific proof that spring has indeed come and winter is now officially over. I know some of you don't want to hear this, it's an uncomfortable truth that is both truthful and uncomfortable. Spring has indeed started, in December.

Let's examine the obviously dire consequences of such a dramatic climactoseasonal paradigmatic shift:

1: It's not even new year and winter's over. You're 2010 yearlist is fucked. No snow bunts, no smews, no winter thrushes.

2: That's it. The chance of lower numbers on my bird lists is the only bad thing that I could think of that could possibly come from climate change.


That's about it for now. Also, Isn't that keyring awesome?

I'm going to Rainham now to find some beardies.

Rainham. While drunk.

I volunteered at Rainham today for the first time in a while. Made a great impression by arriving 2 hours late and slightly inebriated. A quick round of pre-christmas drinks last night turned out to be quite incredibly heavy. Shots were involved, and they never end well. The upshot is that I wasn't really very good at anything until a sausage sammich and about 3 gallons of tea cured any remnants of a hangover by early afternoon. Up to that point I'd made a series of awful misidentifications: the garden's third (possibly fourth?) ever chaffinch started out as a blackcap, the wader that flew over me as I skated up the drive at Rainham went without an ID, two flyover canadas were suddenly barnacles and a common gull turned miraculously into a sabs and back... I couldn't even hold the bins steady until about midday. Rubbish. Still, Rainham looked very good under it's blanket of ice even if I looked and acted dead.


Birding from the centre all day produced a distant peregrine, 60 odd golden plover and a pair of ruff briefly on Purfleet. Five pintail flew around a lot and the flocks of wigeon shat themselves into the sky periodically. Good wintery stuff.

Garden lapwing

I'd hoped the snow might bring something into the garden, so I paid it extra attention today. I was right, too. This fact was almost more pleasing than the snow itself. The blackcap was back every half hour or so, the starling flock gathered throughout the day and there were good amounts of tits and sparrows. Promising. Seeing as the first real cold snap each year brings the grey wagtail in I'd pencilled him in for today. About an hour after a probable flyover it was down on the semi-frozen pond.

Blackcap. One day I'll try and take a recognisable shot of the gardencap.


Is there any better looking British bird? Really? Just look at the colour and the- Oh.

Last year's photos were better. Even this one.

The best bird was saved for last though - a single lapwing flying north-east at about four. Just a lapwing, just flying, but easily the most exciting bird I've seen in ages. 47th personal garden bird, 49th in total. The smart money is on a fieldfare next.

In which I am cold at Abberton.

Today I was mainly cold.

Very, very cold.


Sunrise at Abberton was pretty, but that didn't stop me being cold. Loads of the usual ducks and waders in between the causeways were put up by a peregrine low over the trees, and 5 or 6 goosanders circled round the lake. After a bit of searching two male smew were found diving together and a male pintail was with the less pretty ducks, but there was no sign of anything else. The single whooper swan was sleeping, but a year and Essex tick all the same. 198. The spoonbills seem to have disappeared.

Headed over to Mersea for the tide and walked out to the point past Cudmore Grove, aiming for twite, snow bunting and divers. Of course, none of these were seen but it was all very pleasant. I was probably a bit harsh on Mersea last time I went, but it was high summer and the island is touristy. Today we had it to ourselves.

That's a big mill-pond.

The usual high-tide-in-coastal-essicks waders included a pair of sanderlings and some good waders-in-flight practice was had with the constant streams of mixed flocks passing the point in amongst mergansers, goldeneye and small groups of great crested grebes. Reed buntings, stonechats and skylarks tried and failed to be twite, snow buntings and shorelarks. A particularly dark brent goose had me excited for a bit but turned out to be nothing special.

It's a lark, and it's on the shore... can I have that?

Back at Abberton for the afternoon, where, we watched this thing at the Layer Haye causeway:


Clearly a lesser canada goose, but which one? Whatever, I don't care! Ticked, 199, fuck yeah. I then made the mistake of approaching it, and it went and disappointed me by running straight over, despite possessing all it's wings and no jewellery. Bugger, unTicked, 198. So which race is it? Probably minima. At least that's what most people agreed, though there was talk of a cackling x taverner's hybrid... Something to do with neck length, bill size and jizz... Rubbish. Not to doubt the abilities of my regular readership or anything, but in the unlikely event that someone happens across this blog who knows these differences, do drop me a line and let me know. Whatever happens, if I only find another single year tick this may, er, find itself "upgraded" on the basis that you can't prove it's not wild... It was calling constantly, a noticably higher "yip". Regardless of origin it's a nice bird, and educational to boot.

Cute, huh?

Also, unfortunately this still exists:

Eew.

RCPochard x mallard - been hanging around Layer Haye causeway for a couple of years... wonder how many people tick it as a full RCP without looking?

Back on Layer Breton there were loads of goosanders, another male smew and a showy, if distant redhead. A pair of peregrines flew around and landed on a pylon, giving a good size comparison with the female about a third larger than the male. The whooper swan eventually woke and proceeded to be suitably showy and considerably better than the mutes. There was no sign of the bittern coming into roost, but a barn owl hunted for over an hour, and was way better anyway.





I took a bunch of other equally shit videos which I'll upload later and include in future blog posts. Always leave them wanting more...

No! Don't come any closer! Argh, bollocks... you're not at all wild, are you?

D:

Thorndon is rubbish.

Plan:
1. Proceed to Thorndon North carpark.
2. Locate flock of redpolls and identify any mealies within.
3. Move to beech forest, locate a flock of chaffinches and find bramblings within.
4. Optional: Find crossbill or hawfinch.

Results:
1. Hooray!
2. Fail.
3. Fail.
4. Fail.

Conclusions:
One out of four is actually higher than I anticipated, so in that respect at least it was a resounding success.

Over the course of many visits I have decided that Thorndon, while pretty, is home to no "good" birds. It is however home to 3 nuthatches, a greatspot, a dozen coal tits and at least a million long-tailed tits.


The starlings in the garden are actually pretty cool - I've never given them the time of day unless I see them in a flock of at least a thousand.

Still no serins...

Rainham yesterday, and still no serins. Or any finches, really. The flock seems to have gone. We counted 3 or 4 goldfinches, a chaffinch and a brief group of linnets on the foreshore but for the most part the whole serin-carrying group has done a bunk, taking my serins with them. Faggots. There were probably around 3000 starlings on Wennington marsh with half as many gulls, but I didn't take the time to look through either. Some might call this lazy birding but I call it efficient. There's no point me wasting my time when we all know I'm not going to find anything. Another week gone, and I still need three year ticks - hopefully Monday's Abberton/Mersea trip, will provide something, if it happens.

So apart from the serins, what else did I not manage to see? Probably loads, as we didn't really see much of anything. We did manage to see a new scrape, but that's nothing special as it's pretty large and not all hard to spot. It was covered in lapwings, a handful of snipe and a few golden plovers. We also managed to see a large group of idiots. I say "see", but we heard them as much as anything.

There we were, in a nice quiet hide, muttering profanities at the birding gods for causing the scrape to be devoid of anything other than lapwings when a sudden crash came from the other end of the hide. Surprised, we turned to look at the door, where framed by the light stood a man in a loud red coat.

"DERP" he proclaimed proudly, and at great volume. Unseen voices answered him.

"HURR" they agreed.

Morons then poured into the hide in a constant steam of idiocy and noise. Within ten seconds they were lined up, arms protruding from every window, waving manically. The scrape was emptied. Five minutes of arm waving, phone-ringing spackery later one spoke up:

"HURRDURR", he shouted, and as quickly as they had arrived they left, as one single entity of dicks and stupidity.

Birds preparing to be flushed.

The scrape now totally empty, we left for the boardwalk. Nothing doing. We heard a bearded tit, but didn't actually see it. Rubbish. The woodland had a few redwings but very little else worth spending time on. Another photogenic kestrel sat up on the pylons.


Yes, that last one's not totally awful. Yes, I'm aware that this may be a surprise. A big surprise. So much of a surprise that you may have just spilt your mug of hot manly tea over your human/internet interface module. If this is the case, I'm very sorry, I really am. Unless you're that mac user who keeps visiting. I know you're out there 82.132.136.215, I can see you in browser/OS stats. You visited from an iPhone. Three times. That's three doses of extra concentrated fail you've dumped on my stats page and I can't tell you how upset it's made me. If by some fluke I caused you to spill your Starbucks "mocha-latte with extra gay" on your phone expensive toy then I'm not really sorry at all. Even better, perhaps you totally immersed it in your cup of faggotry. Either way, you've probably just voided your warranty. Oops! But don't panic! This is a good thing, a positive step in the right direction. I mean, you've probably got no money left after shelling out for a such a ridiculous item, right? Then you can thank me later when you're forced to buy a cheaper, more efficient and twice as functional replacement from [insert any company here].

Back on topic, here's a photoshopped version that you can look at if you don't want to try and get around the shock of seeing a nearly-not-crap photo on here. I've tried to make it as authentic as possible. If you forget you saw the other one, everything will be ok.


Other news... oh yeah, I'm now linked from elbf. I expect a significant rise in my hit rate as a direct result, something in the region of 25% or more (<1 person). Click here to see the elbf blog links page, so you can book mark it and find me whenever you want! Or something like that, anyway. Edit: for fucks sake blogger I wanted a less than sign not a html tag stop deleting my shit and merging your shitty tags with my less than sign what the fuck why would you do that seriously it makes no sense, you write awful code, fuck.

I have no idea what I'm writing about tonight.

Insubstantial Unnecessary Posting

Hooray! Filler!

I woke up early today with a vague intention to do the Ingrebourne. Who knows, maybe I'd find a bittern at dawn on Berwick Ponds before checking out the yellowhammer flock on the farm trail and the ducks and waders on the river. Perhaps even a couple of pendulines on the reedmace by the bridge. High expectations. Well, needless to say none of this actually happened. I don't mean just the finding decent birds part, I mean the whole thing. It was raining and I was cold. And lazy.

So I stayed at home. As it turns out this wasn't so bad as the garden today has been a bit good. It started with a pair of foxes sitting next door for most of the day.


I kept checking up on them, hoping to catch some fox-vs-cat action but had no such luck. That right there is a crying shame - I'd pay to see the black and white ones from over the back get eaten by a fox. On one hopeful checkup that was just as devoid of dead cats as every other I picked up a large mixed flock coming through. Didn't expect too much, but gave it a good go; the usual blue, great and long-tailed tits with a few sparrows and a female blackcap. A good start. As this is about the time of year they usually arrive it wasn't entirely unexpected but that makes it no less welcome. I watched the garden for the next hour or so picking up a flock of 6-7 blackbirds (rare here since the 5 cats took over) and finally a party of three, possibly four male blackcaps. Winter has arrived in the garden. All we need now is the grey wagtail to put in an appearance.


There is a bird in that picture, and it is a blackcap, honest.

Over the last few days I've been planning for next year. It should be the year I'm finally able to drive, so I'm hoping it's going to see a big list. I'm not sure quite how much to aim for or what system to use. Other people seem to use a "x new birds per month" system, which is a good idea, but I'm considering aiming for a yearlist of 259. Seems suitably stupidly ambitious considering the life list of only 220 at the time of writing, but this year it looks like I'll miss my paltry target of 200 by just one or two, and I think I'd rather miss by a bit more than that. Luckily 2010 is set to start well with a long weekend in Norfolk in the second week and there are a couple of other potentially good birding trips in the pipeline, so there's always hope.

And finally, just how the fuck do Iron Maiden get away with not being able to play live these days? Compare them today to this from 1985 and you'll see that over the last 20 years they've actually got worse. I mean, sure, Dickinson was as dodgy back then as he is now, but at least they're actually in time...

Tollesbury, backwards

We usually park up at the marina and walk out along the Tollesbury Fleet seawall to Shinglehead Spit, often with the intention walking back along the Blackwater side coming back up to the village through the fields. This never happens. So, after a late start - how long do you really need to cut a girl's hair - we decided to do Tollesbury backwards, and a good decision it was, too. High tide was 1409 at Bradwell, we arrived at about 20 past. We pressed on down the paths to Mill Creek, where all the usual Tollesbury waders were around in good numbers, flocking low over the water. Good, old fashioned winter birding with tea, sandwiches and chocolate surrounded by thousands of dunlin and knot, and several hundred grey and golden plovers with smaller groups of redshank, curlew and ringed plover.


We were really there for the possiblilty of some seabirds on the tide though, as there are still several "easy" seabirds that would add to the yearlist. Once we could see round the huge great black backed sitting on the pillbox, the first bird we saw was a long overdue lifer: a great northern diver just offshore, giving good views. Further out we had a pair of common scoter, with another three further downriver, and later on a shag flew towards the sea. The girl was, as usual, far more excited by the seals than the birds. Grey, I think.

More stunning photography.

This leaves me with a life list of 220, 2009 list of 197 and a self-found list of 192.

Unrelated, we also had a ring-necked parakeet over the garden yesterday - our second ever.

The Rainham Serins Clearly Don't Exist

... or perhaps I'm just terrible at spotting them. Another go at the serins, another failure. I think I'm just gonna have to sit out there for a whole day next week. A map and directions to car park can be found here. I was nice enough to make a special post for you fags who don't know where it is and for some reason you all end up here by mistake. Well, shit. It's probably my fault more than yours, to do with search terms and whatnot, but you're getting the blame. Just so you know.

All very pretty, but I wasn't after pretty, I was after serin. Note how the blackbird photo isn't actually all that hideous.

At least the site is looking like a marsh again. The huge lapwing flock is back and, well, huge, as is the wigeon and teal flock. As we walked up, a flock of 6 or so pipits on the riverside was pushed right up to the new seawall by the high tide. It was about this point that I realised I don't know rock from water as well as I thought I did. I reckon there were both - some cold grey, some warm grey, some streakier than others - but I'm pretty disappointed I couldn't be surer. I'm getting out the books tonight.

Left is original, on the right I dicked around in photoshop.

I mean, seriously. I should know this. The call was a somewhat weak "feeest". Not as strident as I'd expect from a rock pipit... but now I'm just trying to convince myself.

Still, it's not all bad news - the day's minor perfectly acceptable consolation prize was a flyover snow bunting, heading upriver towards Coldharbour Point. On the one day I don't take out a radio I have something worth calling in... Still, in my book it's a pretty good bird.

The Magical One Year Post

Yes, this blog has been lowering the standards of written English and avian photography on the intarwebs for a whole year now. Thing is, I never intended it to be a long term endevour. I think I started it when drunk or bored, possibly both, and kind of planned for it to fizzle out a couple of months after it started or when I got bored - whichever came first. I don't know what went wrong, but I'm very sorry I'm still here.

So, earlier this week I looked over the last year and analysed it using SCIENCE and MATHS. Having invested time and money in specialist ANALITYCUL programs as Firefox, MSPaint and dwarffort.exe I was able to condense my findings into the graph below. To contain the sheer amount of RAW SCIENTIFIC DATA I produced nothing but a widescreen .png was sufficient. Click on it to enlarge it.

Actually don't. It's not very good.

Annotations:

Post Quality: I used to make an effort, but this soon wore off. These days I pretty much spack out on the keyboard and post whatever emerges. Doesn't look set to change.

Post Relevance: Again, I used to make an effort and so this started well, but soon dropped. An attempt in about July to try and bring it back on course had limited success, but this has since worn off. I might make another attempt at keeping the blog on course but don't hold your breath.

Swearing: Has increased. No evidence to suggest this trend won't continue and eventually plateau at every second word being an expletive but I'll try and stop that happening. Probably.

Hits: Showed brief promise after a spell of adding new followers and posting arguing on birdforum - I made it well into the top 500 birding links for a whole week - but this has since dropped off as the people tricked into clicking my link realised just how god damn awful it is. No evidence to suggest any of this will change.

Image Quality: Started low, is still low, will always be low. Would you want anything else?

What next for the web's finest shittiest bird-blog? Well, coming soon, a long-awaited photo-journey round my patch - a blatently stolen post idea - and a long awaited follow-up to the art post I made a year ago, again, an idea I blatently stole. I should draw more. And find the cables for my scanner. Maybe I'll even make a banner that fits the page, or actually go birding and write about that.

I had thought about including some birds in this post, but have seen none of note recently. In fact, the only interesting bird thing wot I sore recently was a pigeon go under a car in Upminster today. Actually went under the car and came out the other end perfectly fine, if a little shaken and down a primary or two. Was back on the road eating bits of poo about thirteen seconds later.

Given that the weekends between here and Christmas are set to be filled with shopping and band rehearsals that 200 is looking pretty unlikely right now.