Tales From An Essex Birder

Birdwatching can often be a tale of what you miss rather than what you see. So when a Wryneck rocked up to Rainham Marshes whilst I was on holiday in Spain I was certainly frustrated - the Red-rumped Swallows by the pool softened the blow though!  Anyway, on return to England the weather forecast appeared to be hotting up with easterly winds predicted for a week or so. However, painting various parts of the house and teaching guitar lessons meant that I had to read the many reports of Pied Flycatchers with envy. Finally, on the 31st August I managed to set some spare time aside for a bit of post-birthday birdwatching - with strong easterlies forecasted it was certainly promising. Having set my alarm for 7:30 to go seawtaching at Canvey, things didn't quite go to plan when instead of getting up, I rolled over and turned the alarm off... Lazy git. However, I was up and ready to walk out the door at 11ish. With nothing mind-blowing being reported, the plan was to head down to Cliffe P...

Yesterday was a rare gulling session in the sense that the gull in question was rare and I rarely watch gulls... On an unsuspecting Sunday noon I found myself venturing to B and Q to buy paint for the kitchen walls. As exciting as this endeavour was (not), I found myself getting that itch to twitch something a bit further afield. For the past few days I had been eyeing up a Squacco Heron at Pagham Harbour as well as a Whiskered Tern in Romsey - however, driving two and a half hours down south held little appeal to me. Being due on holiday in a matter of 3 days I felt I had to get the twitching side of me out of my system before looking at rare bird sightings helplessly from abroad for two weeks. So when the holy red exclamation marks popped up on Birdguides, my initial reaction was one of excitement followed by confusion. Excitement that a first for Britain had rocked up to Cambridgeshire and confusion at having never heard of the bird. After mulling over whether to do the hour and twe...