Our regular wintering Spotted Redshank is still around and we saw it a couple of times last week in Aveley Bay and even on Purfleet Scrape. Do not forget that it is in winter plumage and is silvery grey above and silky white below with a longer thinner biil and longer legs than the Common Redshanks it is normally with. Also in flight it has no white in the wing and a white lozenge up the back so keep your eyes peeled…

It was not especially windy this afternoon but that did not stop a very big tide creeping up on us. It completely sumerged the saltmarsh and overlapped the Victorian seawall and the lower platform adjacent to The Garrison...

I snuck out and took some low level shots. So much plastic rubbish still down there.

Thankfully there was no ummph behind it and it soon dropped without making much of a splash...

All…

Many visitors to the reserve comment on just how many House Sparrows we have around our two centre feeding stations and bemoan the fact that they now have none and we must have pinched them all!

When i first started on the reserve over ten years ago we used to record every single House Sparrow that we saw. They were either alongside the railway or out faraging along the river wall for insects in the summer but only on…

On one of the wet days this week (take your pick) Robin Budgen had his first walk around the reserve. Despite the weather I know that he had a great time and one of the highlights was this female Sparrowhawk that come up at his feet from the edge of the reeds near the chicane and landed bedraggled on a gate.

The white feathering is not all that unusual on a female Spawk.

He also managed to grab a shot of an already…

Good morning everyone!

How are you today?
It's a beautiful day out there! The sun is shining and the reserve looks amazing.

 Rainbow (1 Feb) by Lee Spence

I just wanted to share some of the highlights from this weekend...

There are huge numbers of ducks on site - wigeon, teal, pintail, shelduck, shoveler, pochard, mallard, and gadwall. We're also seeing fabulous numbers of waders - lapwing, redshank, golden…

We have been having a very good run of Caspian Gulls through the reserve at the moment with at least seven or so individuals being seen out on Wennington Marsh or the back of Purfleet Scrape. The former during the day and the latter of a late afternoon.

One of the immatures was colour ringed first winter bird  (Yellow PNEL)

As we suspected  it was a Polish bird and had been ringed as a pullus on 24th May 2013 at Paczkow…

Our tame female Kestrel was back on Friday and Lee Spence got real close to her as she came down to feed on worms on the path.

Have not seen Nelson for a little while... hope he is ok

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The marsh is home to loads of Snipe at the moment and over 20 were on show around the sedgey edges of Purfleet Scrape for most of the day. There are plenty down on the foreshore at the moment too and I saw a wisp of 70 swirling around as the tide came in yesterday.

Bob Cooper got some good shots as they came in to land.

Check those edges for some sleepy, stripy, cryptic probers!

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