Grays Bird Obs

So, with the closure of Romford Bird obs, moving in to a new Obs building, settling in, and the usual day-job it's been a fairly hectic few weeks. Productive in terms of birds, though. Birding from home has become a whole lot easier and far better. The scope is currently set up permanently in our middle room. If I want to seawatch, Essex Style, It's a simple case of opening the curtains and looking. While it's not up there with Pendeen or Sheringham (yet) it has its own charms, most notably that a shit bird at a "proper" seawatch location is a "FUCK WHAT THE FUCK" bird at Grays. The day a manxie flops upriver and gets eaten by a greater-back will be a very good day indeed. For me, anyway. Other fantastic house birds recently have been dunlin, common sand, a peregrine exactly where we'd predicted it would turn up, a kestrel, 3 linnets... It's been amazing.

The only downside so far is that having to spend so much time away from the obs at this silly people-helping nasty lefty liberal do-gooder "charity" job, is that when good things do get seen I'm often not there to see them. Cases in point were the juv night heron earlier in the week, or the 4 black terns at Rainham last night that would, inevitably, have gone right past my scope. If only I'd been there to look through it.

Fresh from hearing about the terns I left work last night for the pub, slightly peeved that another good bird had escaped me. Halfway across Tower Bridge a lesser black-back crossed the road, lower than they usually do, barely skimming the tourists' umbrellas. A smaller, darker shape shot after it - a female peregrine. It gave chase and they dropped to within a metre or two of the water, before tearing a chunk of feathers from the gull's back. The birds seperated and circled away, the peregrine coming to rest on the top of the bridge. Shortly afterwards, a second peregrine attempted the same thing, just narrowly missing. All the while, with oblivious people around me, I stood and watched, immediately and unreasonably optimistic about birds. I might never get another chance for night heron (seriously, what the fuck) from the house but black terns? EASY.

Obligatory unrelated spadger pic. This one was at The Lizard. By the time I make a "We has done Cornwall" post I'll have used up all the reasonable photos I took. Most of them were of sparrows and chaffinches anyway...

In the Hoop and Grapes, with the kind of optimism that only seeing peregrines then drinking four 4 pints of doombar can instill, plans were made for a pre-work seawatch.

"But there were 4 past Rainham last night! They must have gone past Grays! I simply can't fail to see them! It's just not possible!"

I knew the tide would be right (ish) and that there would be a mildly (but not really) promising N/NE wind (according to xcweather), around 530am. What could go wrong?

I woke nice and early, having been in bed around half ten, and stumbled through to the scope at about half past five. It was slow going at first - a few common terns were fishing mid-channel, a magpie finally made its way onto the list, the first three common gulls of the autumn were roosting with the black-heads and 5 oystercatchers on the jetty... But nothing that I could reasonably call a black tern. Another silly birding idea, born of misplaced and unrealistic optimism? Probably. It reached 6am, and I needed to call it quits. Just as I was trying to string another common into an arctic, another tern appeared, heading upriver. Smaller, darker, and twisting and turning in that special way... I watched it right up as far as I could, before it disappeared behind a ship coming down. Absolutely, 100% black tern. Done.

Brilliant.

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I brought the camera in to work today. I was feeling lucky. Of course, there was no sign of the peregrines on the bridge. I was hoping to furnish this post with a nice relevant picture. This will have to do.

They looked a bit like this, just with less fur, more feathers, in a city, not Cornwall, chasing a gull. Use your imagination.