Tales From An Essex Birder

Having been back at uni in Liverpool for close to a week, it was decided that some birding was certainly in order. Thus me and Marc decided on a trip to WWT Martin Mere due to its good public transport links as well as the reserve having hosted both a Purple Heron and a Spotted Crake the day prior.  The arranged meeting time was 10am at Liverpool central station, however an impromptu night out and the losing of my phone resulted in me waking up at quarter to 11 and turning up an hour and a half late still pissed. Safe to say this was not my finest start to a birding trip and poor Marc had been waiting for me all that time! After apologising loads, we eventually got going. 2 trains and a couple of hours later we eventually arrived at the reserve. In broke student style we walked through a footpath at the back and hopped a fence - managing to get in without paying the entrance fee! A stop in the first hide revealed a decent amount of action with large numbers of finches taking advant...

I've been thoroughly enjoying having some free time recently before work starts again at university - as a result I've been able to spend some decent time in the field. With the shared car available for half a day and news that the Stone-curlews were still present at Coalhouse Fort scrape, I thought I'd try my luck with these long-staying birds. It was also an excuse to visit a site that I had never birded before. I'd been intending to make the short journey for months but had kept putting it off for one reason or another - Stone-curlew is certainly a great species to see in my native county of Essex and having only seen the species once before at Cavenham Heath a couple of years back, it would have been rude not to. Upon arrival, I was greeted with a light north-westerly breeze as I walked along the sea wall. There were high numbers of Linnets constantly passing over my head and a pair of Great-Crested Grebes elegantly graced the River Thames. A Marsh Harrier briefl...

 And....... breathe. After an incredible weekend in the field, I am now faced with the tricky task of writing about it in a way that can truly capture all the excitement. This could be a long one so buckle in... Day 1 - 09/09/22 6AM. My alarm goes off and I uncharacteristically jump out of bed before loading the car and setting off swiftly - my aim being to maximise the amount of time that I spend at the birdwatching Mecca that is Spurn. After 5 hours of driving I was finally greeted by the sight of Kilnsea Wetlands on the approach road to Spurn in addition to the myriad of birders that was only going to multiply over the weekend. After parking up and setting up my tent with relative ease, I set off on my first walk with the hope of connecting with my first rarity of the weekend - a juvenile Citrine Wagtail that had been lingering around the Riverside Hotel.  A Tree Sparrow feeding in the Observatory garden on the walk there was a good sign. And It appeared that my good run o...

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...