Screwed up

Well I messed that up. I dedided to go to the Park this morning to stock up on year ticks. What I should have done was go to the Flats, where 99 times out of a hundred I would be on a Saturday morning. So I was stood by the Roding in the Old Sewage Works year-ticking a Little Egret, a bird that frankly I could see just about any day I fancied, when a flock of Lapwing flew over the Flats. Excellent. I was about done anyway so hurried back and spent the next two hours scanning the sky from my usual vantage point. Guess how many Lapwings flew over? 

Shoulder of Mutton just after first light

The other thing I messed up was my spreadsheet of targets. I thought I had added two birds in the Park as I had also seen a Kestrel, but it turns out that I hadn't yet seen Gadwall or Grey Heron either, so with the addition of a Reed Bunting on the Flats I now find myself on 59, one greater than I ended last January on. And tantalisingly close to 60 of course. But missing Lapwing, a bird that I should have prioritised the merest possibilty of. Oh well, plenty of time left. I think I remember saying that throughout last year....

Weekend Targets

The weekend is upon us. Praise be. It was a tough week here in Wanstead. Well, in Canary Wharf more specifically. But it is over and the next two days are mine. Birds are required. I thought about going somewhere different but there is a lot to do here in Wanstead, a lot to try and eke out.

Blackbird fell this morning on Wanstead Flats. The Central Line has been suffering from a lack of trains, the one thing that you might hope that it had lots of. Rather than spend half an hour on Leytonstone platform each morning I've been walking across Wanstead Flats and getting on the Elizabeth Line which has the required number of trains to able to take people to work. Most mornings it has been deathly quiet, no life in the frigid landscape, but today there was a bit of a flurry with Blackbird, Jay and Stonechat falling quite quickly. This puts me on 54 for the year. I had thought it was 53, but I had of course forgotten Cormorant, much as I do every year. This means that there are a lot of targets. Do have a spreadsheet? Of course I do.....

I hope to find at least some of these tomorrow. My January average is 64, so ideally I'd like to see slightly over half of these before the month is out but let's see. It will be nice to spend a little bit more time out there rather than have to yomp rapidly across, but I fear the mostly frozen water bodies will have seen off a fair few of these targets. They will be back I'm sure. Maybe 60 is a nice number to aim at, and a bit more realistic. I'll be in touch.

Great White Egret

It has been a very nice and relaxed start to the patch year, made even better by being in The Gambia for a week and seeing far better birds than are available locally. More to come on that later, probably a lot later as I'm still stuck somewhere around July 2023 on that front. Maybe I'll just skip ahead a little? 

Anyway, the usual jam has occured and not only did I manage to see Waterthrush in Essex, but back in Wanstead I also scraped the Ferruginous Duck which turned out to be a one day wonder. I also picked out the Med Gull on Jubilee on a short afternoon thrash after the twitch to Essex, and as I mentioned briefly in that post also had the good fortune to be standing around chatting to Nick when a Great White Egret flew over us and appeared to descend. We hoofed it over there to discover it had indeed landed - a rare sight indeed. It was of course extremely short-lived, and two of the innumerable off-lead dogs that occupy the patch every minute of every day caused it to fly off. I didn't have my camera, but had the presence of mind to whip out my phone and video it as it flew right past us. I've just worked out how to post this so here it is.

In other news whilst looking for the Ferruginous Duck yesterday I also saw the Water Rail on Jubilee, presumably the same bird I found in late November last year. As the pond is now almost entirely iced over it showed very well, and in keeping with my relaxed approach to patch birding this year this was just my 51st species of 2024. Slow and steady wins the race or whatever the phrase is, and there are still plenty of things I've yet to see that will gradually eke my total upwards. Such gems as Little Grebe for instance, and Blackbird..... It has always been a life goal of mine to see GWE and Ferruginous Duck on the patch before Blackbird so I'm very pleased to have finally managed it.

Patch tick

I hadn't really thought I'd get a patch tick this year, and certainly not in January. Or maybe I hadn't spent much time considering it as any new birds are just so random these days. When I think about what we've had, and what my biggest gaps are versus some of the others who bird here, there is really nothing very obvious that sticks out. So it is all about rarities, and of course these can turn up at any time. Cold snaps, such as they one we are currently in, are often good, but the expectation here is a rare (but resident) wader, pushed off an icy field, lake or shoreline, and a high likelihood of it being a very brief flyover as we have no suitable habitat. The expectation is definitely not a Ferruginous Duck swimming about on a tiny pond as that would be ridiculous.

But that is what has just happened. No doubt a Fudge Duck can get pushed off a frozen lake just as a wader can, but this is random dialled up to 11. Where has it come from? (Who does it belong to?! Ha!) Actually it looks good, or as good as a Ferruginous Duck can. There are no traces of hybridism, there are no rings, and as yet it hasn't got involved in eating bread. Looking at BirdGuides the closest and most recent drake that hasn't subsequently been reported is a bird at end of last week in Nottinghamshire, 160 miles away. Could it be this one? There has been some very cold weather there. There is another one a bit closer, in Norfolk, but that's still there, or was on the morning that our one turned up. But for this bird, wherever it came from, to end up on the smallest and most accessible pond in Wanstead is just crazy! I mean the chances of cold weather displacing any individual bird are exactly the same, rarity or resident, but in that case where are the 100 Pochard and 250 Tufties? Nope, just this one.

It's credentials are impossible to know and we will almost certainly never find out. In these situations I'd like to think it would get the benefit of any doubt. Regardless, it is a super find by Tim, and needless to say a first for the patch. It's my 168th bird here and I am within touching distance of another milestone! Jubilee Pond is tiny, and when the bird arrived was already about 75% frozen. It was thus limited to a much smaller area of open water and showed brilliantly, almost too well actually, but we are putting that down to the need to feed and there being no other option for it. All the wild Shoveler and other ducks are having to do the same.

Almost all the regular patch birders managed to see it, now we just have to see if stays. Part of me wants it to depart immediately so that it remains unblemished, but I'd like those few who have so far missed out to see it - this is a collective patch despite the competitive element. I managed a couple of brief photos late in the day in sub-optimal light. Not ideal, but on the plus side the bird was extremely close in to the edge.

Playing it cool for the Waterthrush

I made the trip to Heybridge this morning to see the Northern Waterthrush. I had wondered when the first over-wintering Yank would be found after the mega-fall in the autumn, but a bird an hour away in Essex had not been on my radar at all. It was found late last week I think, just as I was leaving the country. There was no need to panic as I'd seen the bird on Scilly many years ago, but part of me felt that fear of missing out. A Waterthrush! In Essex! Happily it was still on offer when I got back yesterday. Otherwise engaged, I had to wait until today, but the bird played ball.

Mick picked me up around 8am, and by 9.20am we were on site. Twenty minutes of that was the walk from the designated car park near Heybridge Basin, so it was of course rather disappointing (but not in the least surprising) to discover that many there had decided that parking opposite the bird and in front of people's houses at 7am on a Sunday morning was absolutely A-OK. Clearly more convenient but imagine if that were your house. I'd be properly pissed off.

We had missed the early morning showings, but the bird returned a few hours later as has consistently been the case the last few days. A good thing it did as by this point, sitting on the cold ground, my backside was numb. Shutters went nuts as you can imagine, including my own, although somehow I had managed to dial in the ISO to 8000 when I had meant to stop at 3200. Oh well, at least it meant a reasonably decent shutter speed - it is quite dark in the bird's favoured ditch. It landed in small oak first, giving the game away with its sharp metallic call as it dropped in. Pausing momentarily it then skipped into the ditch and started to feed along the edges, coming ever closer. Oh boy. 

It may have jumped up onto the nice mossy culvert wall, but we will never know as when the bird was reasonably close and getting closer a long blast of a car horn sent it skittering back down the channel and soon after that it was off. Presumably this was a local venting his or her frustration at having to slalom down their own street. People were sarcastically irritated - "Thanks mate!", "Bet that was on purpose", but you reap what you sow frankly. 

In other news I had a quick mooch around the western side of Wanstead Flats later in the afternoon, hoping to pick up Tony's Med Gull that Richard had refound when I was in Essex. I wasn't holding out a great deal of hope that it was there still, but soon after meeting Nick and agreeing that it had likely done one I picked it out in the melee. A bird I didn't get on the patch last year - alongside Snipe and Lapwing, both of which have already fallen (to others!) this year. Funny how these things pan out. It was to get better though, as standing chewing the fat with Nick back towards my house he picked out a Great White Egret flying over us. Remarkably it landed in what we call the 'Boggy Bit' and as the inevitable flushing by our four-legged friends occured I was able to video it flying off. This was my 7th GWE for the patch, all of which have been since 2018 - clearly increasing. So all in all a fine day with a few decent birds to kick off the year with.

Flower wonder

Just a quick update as we head towards halfway through January to say that my Strelitzia flower has become evem more impressive. If you recall it burst into life on December 18th, so this has been in bloom for over three weeks. I have some plants whose flowers last just one day, like Mayflies. This one on the other hand has some real longevity. If you go back and look at my original photo you will see that more petals and spathes or whatever it is that they are called have emerged, and that the flower head now looks spectacular. Also note how the angle has changed to nearly 90 degrees as the flower has matured. It is just magical how it does this.

You can also see that it is leaking nectar profusely. I had a quick taste and it is incredible sweet, a shame that there are no native insects to take advantage of it. I've been having to mop up pools of it from the floor underneath plant, and it shows no signs of giving up. Eventually of course it will fade and dry out, but I may cut if off at the stem and keep it as an art installation in a swanky ceramic vase for a while. The next step is to repot the plant in the spring, if I can get it to get really big it could end up producing multiple flowers each year, a bit like my larger Aloes.

Coot takeover

The local Coots have started warring again. Maybe they never stop? Earlier this week I had four in a face-off, warily circling one another, necks and heads to the water. From time to time one would lunge at another one, and the other two would then pich in as well, though whether in defence of the first one or in cohorts with the other was impossible to tell. Eventually one would have enough and shoot off with the other three in pursuit and then this curious western would begin again on a slightly different part of the pond. They seem to have no off button.

Alexandra Lake currently has the most Coots, I counted 59 at the start of the year and that is probably under-selling it. The biggest concentrations, gangs if you will, is at the end near the car park where people arrive to dump rotting veg, bread, rice and other wholly unsuitable foot stuffs. I've blogged about this before, no need to again, but when this happens you don't just see a melee of Gulls and Geese, the Coots are front and centre, all their battle training coming to the fore. You don't even need to have food, just the fact you stand on two legs is sufficient to have them all hurtling out of the pond to stand at your feet. So far I've not been attacked for being empty-handed, but you feel that day will surely come for one poor unsuspecting visitor, and they will be mercilessly pecked to death and then dragged into the shallows to be consumed. The Moorhens - and there are quite a few - will take the scraps.

No I didn't see a Northern Waterthrush at the weekend in case you were wondering.