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...

Returning home from University in Liverpool brought with it mixed emotions - on the one hand I was gutted to be far away from my uni mates again, but on the other hand was the prospect of some proper meals. Oh. And a closer proximity to Kent, Suffolk and Norfolk for some birding. It was the latter county that proved to be the first to wet my birding appetite when the news was released that up to 7 Bee-eaters were attempting to nest at a quarry in Triminghan. Whilst the birds were reportedly attempting to breed (meaning they'd likely stick around a while) I didn't want to take any chances so set out to see them at the first opportunity. This first opportunity proved to be the 18th June. On the chosen day I set off at around half 7 for the long drive up to North Norfolk in the humid weather (since the heat wave had buggered off) and arrived on site at around 10ish. Upon entering the car park two things became apparent - that the RSPB had done a cracking job at arranging a safe vi...

After what can only be deemed as a successful twitch the day prior, I was praying that I hadn't used up all my luck as today was the big one. Having ummed and arred about whether to go, I caved in and booked a £65 train ticket to Bempton Cliffs in the hope of seeing Albert - what can only be described as a bucket list bird. Having booked the ticket a week in advance, I had been keeping a keen eye out on news of the bird. Reports that it was only seen at 7:30 am the previous day and failing to return certainly had me nervous for the following day. Finally D-Day had come around and I arose at 5am to gather my things and head to Liverpool Lime Street bracing for the 4 and a half hours and 3 trains ahead. Well on the way to Bempton by now, the first reports of the morning were negative - which only served to increase my nervousness. Would all this time and money be for nothing? However, at around 10 am news came through that the bird was back at its faithful cliff by staple news viewpo...

It's been a solid 9 months since the last blog post and I can only apologise for inactivity - however it was a flurry of top birds that has given me back the bug for both twitching and blogging. Ever since dipping an American Robin earlier in the year (the less said about that the better) my luck has been in and I've had four successful twitches on the bounce - all of which I plan to document on here. 29/05/2022 The first of this series of birds rocked up on 29th May 2022. Having just finished my second year of uni, I found myself with some time on my hands for the first time in the while - which I planned to utilise by birding as much as possible. The day was intended to be a lazy one. I awoke with a lousy hangover due to some excess drinking the previous night - a standard procedure at uni - and I remained in bed until around midday. However, all was about to change when I received the update from Birdguides that the touring White-Tailed Lapwing had stopped off at Bickershaw...

After visiting Spurn for Migfest 2019, I fell in love with the place. Seeing a Barred Warbler in the hand, as well as Marsh Warbler, White-rumped Sandpiper and my first ever Skuas provided a magical weekend - one that has been documented in the archives of this blog. Fast forward 2 years; a global pandemic has prevented me from returning to this wonderful place. The understandable cancellation of the festival in 2020 was heartbreaking to me and meant that I had to wait yet another year to return to the place. But after seeing another years worth of mouth-watering sightings coming from Spurn, the time eventually came around for my second ever Migfest. Having managed to buy my weekend ticket prior to them selling out, I made the decision to do the long drive myself. So after a 5 hour drive in which I saw a Great Spotted Woodpecker , a Red Kite and even managed to year tick a Grey Partridge , I arrived at Spurn and began setting up my tent... Day 1 - 10/09/2021 After setting up the tent,...

 As August begins to draw to a close, the migrant season usually begins to hot up. With the multiple sightings of migrants such as Pied Flycatcher and Whinchat etc as well as scarcer migrants such as Wrynecks being reported in the past few weeks - this has certainly been the case. In fact, it was the latter species that I set my targets on when me and my Dad set off to Kent on a brisk, late August, post-birthday birding session. Having only had a brief glimpse of a Wryneck once before in August last year at Porthgwarra, the aim was to get my first good views of the species. With this in mind, we set off towards Abbott's Cliff (where two Wrynecks had been reported for the last few days). Before venturing along the cliff, we stopped for a sandwich at a beautiful, picturesque cafe which overlooked the cliffs and the misty sea. After fuelling up with a Tuna Mayo sandwich (controversial I know) we headed out towards the location. Having never been to the site before, I was unsure of wha...