Been wanting to have a day devoted to simply blasting away at things, and for once a sunny day coincided with a weekend when I wasn't busy. Hurrah! I was up and out immediately after a nice lie in, and my first stop was the "orchard" on the Flats. This contained a solitary Fieldfare which promptly flew off when it saw my red camo hat. The local Blue Tits proved more accommodating, and seemed to think it might be spring. I suspect tomorrow they'll realise they've screwed up.
A quick pass by the Alex was a waste of time, the light being completely against me, but I notched up another fine count of Greylag with 24 birds pottering around the car park, hoping against hope no doubt for some mouldy pitta breads. Moving on to the Park I hoped for better opportunities, but nothing doing either on the Heronry or on Perch. Hmmm, so much for my big day of constant shutter-hammering. I decided to try the Ornamental Waters, and I'm glad I did. Apart from Joe Public, it was absolutely perfect. The ice-free bit was in front of the sun, and the Gadwall and Mallards were enjoying precisely the area that was best from my point of view. I cantered serenely past 400 shots in no time at all, a few of which are shown below. Too many? Probably.
Learning from Mick that my next destination of Fisher's Green was closed, and hopes of Bittern therefore dashed, my backup plan was to head back to Hyde Park for another crack at the Bearded Tits, so I hastened home for a quick bite to eat, an Oystercard, and a bag in which to conceal and transport various bits of camera. Despite saying very sternly to myself that I would stay awake on the tube and thus prevent my valuable possessions from being snaffled from under my very nose, I fell asleep more or less instantly. I have a habit of doing this on public transport, but luck was on my side this time as I woke up at Bond Street only a few stops before I needed to get off, and my bag was still at my feet. Up the lifts at Lancaster Gate and out into glorious sunshine and blue sky. No ISO 1600 for me! Until about ten minutes later when I got to the Bearded Tits of course, when the sky clouded over, the sun disappeared, and once again I found myself cranking it up. A real shame given the effort I'd made, but c'est la vie I suppose.
There are two things I like about Hyde Park. One is that the birds are all very tame. And two is the continuing presence of Bearded Tits. There are however fifty-thousand things I don't like about Hyde Park, and they are all people. There are people everywhere, and if you have a camera on a tripod you are PUBLIC PROPERTY. If I had a pound for every person today who prevented me from taking photos and asked me what I was doing and what I was looking at, I would be able to retire before Monday. Ye Gods, the number of cretins I had to deal with today was unparallelled! When will people learn that if you're pointing a camera at something then the one (three) thing(s) you want is space, peace, and quiet, and not a crowd of jabbering idiots all around you? The low point was when a Japanese tourist physically inserted his head between my head and my viewfinder in order to look down my lens. No asking, no please may I, he just stuck his head there. Unbelievable. I threw him in the Serpentine - didn't ask his permission, just chucked him straight in. You make your bed, you gotta lie in it. In the end, I actually gave up talking. There are only so many times you can say that there are Bearded Tits in a reed bed, what Bearded Tits look like, if Bearded Tits are rare, where Bearded Tits come from, if they are making A FUCKING NEST! Imbeciles.....So to anyone who encountered a grumpy git in a red hat who completely and utterly ignored them, including the Scottish chap who complained to passers by that I wouldn't tell him how many birds there were, or indeed anything at all, please accept the fact that I hate you all and if I ever see you again in my entire life it will be too soon. There, glad I got that off my chest. I complain about various segments of humanity here in Wanstead, but if I had somewhere like Hyde Park as my patch I reckon I would go completely loopy. Or spend quite a lot of time behind bars for assault.
Fieldfare is possibly my favourite thrush, though Siberian is a close call. Unfortunately most of those turn out to be either fictional or recently-purchased. The Fieldfares on Wanstead Flats however are very real and entirely wild. Despite my sterling efforts in reuniting ex-dogs with their sad owners, Nick is still far more compassionate than I am, and when the snow started he went around and plonked a few apples on a couple of Hawthorns near the viz-mig point to help the birds get through it. These were found pretty much instantaneously, and so far these treats (along with coconut and oats) have been enjoyed by not only Fieldfare, but also by Jay, Blue Tit, Great Tit, Song Thrush, Dunnock, Robin, Blackbird and Waxwing). Hawthorns are fairly tangled affairs, so getting a clean perch is verging on the impossible, but I spent a happy half hour there this lunchtime. Mainly this was to get out of the House of Vomit I currently reside in, I figure I can't catch it if I'm stood ankle-deep in snow in the middle of the Flats. All too soon it was time to get back to the day job though, and to once again run the gauntlet of extreme bacterial infection. So far I've not succumbed, thanks largely I feel to large and regular dosages of cask strength Caol Ila. I'm a big believer in preventative medicine...
A few more Lapwings today didn't really repay the effort I put into the patch this weekend. I jacked it in at lunchtime and came home to play with the kids. The Lego-fest I had had in mind never materialised, as Muffin has now caught whatever Pudding had, and thus felt more like throwing up all over the place than playing. Poor kid, he had to watch his sisters playing in the snow whilst he felt rotten indoors - as a nine year old that's pretty much the last thing you want to have happen. Pudding's troubles lasted three days, so this is just the beginning, and we still have a kid to go. Touch wood neither Mrs L nor I have yet to go down with it, but I have this horrible suspicion that it is only a matter of time, and that is about the last thing I need. Though of course fairly good news from a weight-loss point of view. Anyhow, it's been a while since the kiddos made it to these pages, so here are a few from the snowman-making in the garden this afternoon. He's called Nathan, and I forgot to take a photo of him - perhaps tomorrow if I'm stuck at home talking down the big white telephone...
I have just one piece of advice for anyone thinking of birding in Wanstead, and it is this: Never let Nick out of your sight. Not for a second, for even if you've spent the whole day with him he will go and find something good the moment you part company. Today he pretended he was off to Hyde Park to twitch the Bearded Tits, but instead went and found Goosander on the patch. I had thought I was pretty safe, and with a prior engagement in town, had headed for home not five minutes earlier. Bosh, another grip off.
In fact today was pretty grippy most of the way through. Bob initially thought he had managed to add himself to one of my favourite lists, namely the "People who have seen Woodlark on the patch who are not me" list, but on reflection cannot be sure, and then contrived to see both a Golden Plover and two Linnet over by Jubilee Pond. To make certain I saw neither of them he sent me off to the Alex to look for them and blamed it on old age - a likely story. Meanwhile Dan scooped a flock of Lapwing over by Alex that I didn't see either... it was all looking fairly bleak. Linnet is regular in autumn, not too worried about them, but Goosander I've seen just twice, and Golden Plover just once - these could be tricky birds to get back. Luckily the day wasn't a complete grip-off as the Lapwing story ended happily when I picked up another flock just a short while later - probably around 40 birds - and then a singleton over the Park. Little Egret on the Roding was another patch year-tick, so I am now sitting pretty on 66. The overall patch list is 76 though, so somehow I am 10 down within three weeks - frankly this is a tad worrying. I guess I shall just have to reconcile myself to seeing the least of anyone. Sniff.
I've almost certainly used the first part of this blog post title before, and the content of whatever that post was is probably almost identical to what this post will be. But that's patch birding for you. And blogging... To cut a long story short, I went out on the patch to find a specific bird, and duly found it. Wow. Trudging back home through the snow, it occured to me that patch year-listing is basically about finding all the same birds as you did last year, but in a very slightly different order. What fun!
The bird I was after was Woodcock, and so I walked around the area that I felt was most promising for one - namely Motorcycle Wood - and sure enough one flew out. Amazing. Whilst there, I also saw my first Fieldfare for the year - fairly pitiful on the 18th of January, but they have been thin on the ground, and I've not been out much. I've seen Fieldfare on the 1st of January in every single year that I have records for, and so this has injected some spice into my yearlist, with Fieldfare at #63, whereas both last year and the year before it was at #15. This kind of variety is what patch birders live for! As I got even closer to home, I felt some stats brewing......
Because I tend to follow the same route on every New Year's Day, the birds are often seen in a very similar order - Common Gull #10 the last couple of years for example, and Gadwall is always in the mid-40s, which is generally what I'm on when I reach Alexandra Lake. Little Grebe is the low to mid-50s, indicating I've arrived in Wanstead Park..... Slightly depressingly you can actually continue well beyond the 1st of January - for the entire year in fact. The months tend to come in the same order, and so too do the migrants - everyone's (my) favourite, the Wheatear clocking in at #81 in both 2011 and 2012, Whinchat at #95, and Sedge Warbler #106. The big surprise this year was of course Great Crested Grebe on day one - unprecedented, and a real shock result. Two extremely selfish waterbirds have destroyed the careful equilibrium built up over many years, bastards.
In both 2011 and 2012, my patch list was 113 species. Convenient for statistical analysis, and amazing foresight on my part. But here's the rub. Of those 113 species, 104 - 92%, were the same. 2012 saw Osprey, Oystercatcher, Stone Curlew, LRP, Green Sand, Wood Sand, Caspian Gull, Treecreeper and Yellowhammer replaced by Mandarin, Goldeneye, Smew, Goosander, Golden Plover, Jack Snipe, Short-Eared Owl, Wryneck and Nuthatch. Don't get me wrong, these 8% really get the juices going, it's what patch-working is all about and I love it. The trouble is the other 92%.......
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I don't know where you live, but Leytonstone high street is now wall-to-wall shops selling fruit and vegetables from small plastic bowls, interspersed with chicken-based fast food outlets and places selling phonecards. On the same street, where Woolies once was is now an Argos, and in Wanstead it's now a Tesco Metro. Last week Jessops went under, and this week - so far - HMV and Blockbuster have collapsed. Where is it all going to end? Who is next, and what will our high streets eventually look like? Are all high streets going to look like Leytonstone, where once a variety of small businesses and national chains thrived, but is now a monoculture of fried chicken and grapefruits?
It's all rather depressing. Not that I've bought anything at Jessops, HMV and Blockbuster for many years, and if my shopping habits are repeated across the land then you can easily see what the problem is, but the point is I once shopped there, and thus have an affection for them, even if crucially that affection didn't extend to actually going there and spending money. Jessops I've talked about, but HMV is the same - it was the place to buy music when I was a kid (although of course it's history goes back way further than that). Not that I was a muso particularly, but when, ten years behind everyone else I discovered U2 and whoever, that was where I went. I also bought all my TDK tapes from HMV, they had great huge bins of them - when did you last see a tape? Is that when the decline started? Similarly, when videos were new technology, and when our family finally got one, we joined Blockbusters. I loved going there, with it's crummy blue carpets and yellow shelves, I had a membership card and everything - it was like a library, but fun! And when I went to my Grandma's, she would rent videos to keep us occupied, and they were from Blockbuster too. I've not been there for years, decades in fact, but I'm still sad they're gone. I was amazed that they were still around actually, surely that business model died ages ago? Anyhow, very sad. Lovefilm is pretty good though, I went for the DVD and streaming package.
In other news, the 2012 Peanut Challenge was concluded at a public house on Monday night. Pubs are also disappearing left right and centre across the country, and here at least I am able to contribute to their ongoing survival. Never let it be said that I am a selfish consumer. The pub of choice was The Grapes in Limehouse, and very nice it was too. And to my knowledge, it has yet to kill anyone, which makes it better than some pubs I could mention. I had an emergency packet of peanuts in my pocket, but in the event they were not needed as The Grapes had three extremely large jars of peanuts behind the bar. I ordered one (bowl) of each - standard, roasted, and (I think) sweet chilli. James A is not a huge fan of peanuts, which meant I ended up eating 95% of them, and for which I paid the next day. No matter. Excellent discussions were had about quite how rubbish our work patches were, and we both agreed that although the 2012 competition had been a draw at 42 species each, it was highly likely that Canary Wharf was actually even worse than Tower Bridge. Which means I win, but seeing as I had already purchased the peanuts, this was somewhat of a moot point. I drank far too much beer for a Monday night - or any night - and woke up at 3am with the most incredible thirst, no doubt brought on by excess peanut consuption. It's the last time I do that in a hurry. In fact, we agreed that we might skip the work patch-listing for 2013, mainly on the grounds that suicide might be a likely outcome for one or both of us.
So I'll be sticking to Wanstead, which this year has seen my worst ever start - it is mid month and I have only just reached my Jan 1st total from last year. Teal fell today. I can barely contain my excitement.
Fabulous views of the Bearded Tits in Hyde Park this morning, and nice to see a few familiar faces enjoying them too. An amazing record when you think about it, especially as the "reedbed" they are in is about the size of bus stop, though perhaps not as deep.... Both birds are BTO ringed, so I spent a bit of time aiming at the legs instead of going for the artistic shots. I've manged to piece together one of the codes, and it seems another observer has managed five out of the six digits, so hopes are high that it can be worked out where these two little beauties came from. I took Muffin along too, he is getting quite keen on taking photos, and he also needed Bearded Tit. They showed magnificently, mere feet away - this is the way to see birds for the first time, and he'll always remember it, rather than some blob miles away. There are some more photos here.
In fact we made a bit of a day of it, and once our parking ticket ran out at Hyde Park, by which time we were both frozen anyhow, we carried on across London and out to the west for a long-staying Great White Egret in Herts, and only a couple of miles outside the M25. We found the right place very easily, my instincts telling me that the river was likely at the bottom of the valley and not at the top of the hill, and hadn't even stopped the car when I was forced to raise my bins at lightning speed to confirm that the white bird in the reeds did indeed have a yellow bill. Tick #2 for Muffin. Naturally we got out and went and had a proper look at it, during which time it didn't do much other than just stalk around. Some Little Egrets were good to compare it with - here's one of the Great White flying around trying to scare one of the Littles....
Not done yet, we decided that two Buff-bellied Pipits for our London lists far exceeded one Buff-bellied Pipit, so trundled back round the M25 towards Horton and Wraysbury. The birds seem to be spending more time away from the reservoir, good news for the £2 nestling in my pocket. We found the spot pretty much straight away, and there they were, feeding together around some large puddles. Roy W was also there (in fairly heavy winter plumage, it seems he moved through Movember into Mocember without a backwards glance, and is currently headed for Mofebruary and beyond!) having a pop at them, so we stealthily joined him. Easier than the last time, but the results aren't quite there sadly as this time the bird(s) were much further away. Flushed with this success we carried on to somewhere in Berks where we ticked Bradders and Crofty, but dipped the Pallas's Warbler and got very cold. Still, you can't win 'em all, and we had a very good day and made it back in time to see Africa and a baby Elephant dying on TV. Top family entertainment - my daughter had to leave the room and fetch a cuddly toy.
