Although migrants were again notable in their absence it was still quite a productive day out on the marsh in the end with 8 Ringed Plover, Grey Plover, 48 Redshank, 105 Dunlin, 37 Curlew, over the high tide. In addition there were about 60 Lapwing, 57 Golden Plover, 48 Snipe and 5 Ruff on the flashes on Wennington and Aveley. Five Great Crested Grebe bobbed around offshore but there were no seaduck today.
A Bittern was flushed by a fox out of the first ditch on Wennington and headed off towards the back of the Target Pools... I suspect that this will be a different bird from our early February individual.
There were still six Scandinavian Rock Pipits on the foreshore along with the two Corn Buntings and a pair of Stonechat while ten Pintail were still amongst the very healthy flock of about 300 Wigeon. More on the pipits later...
Stonechat (Trevor Oakley)
A large female Peregrine put on a great show this morning and even landed on Purfleet Scrape and the mega-falcon with Gyr in its blood hurtled across the marsh putting the fear of the Easter Bunny into everything. Apparently it resides on a gasometer in Docklands.... The immature male Marsh Harrier was seen soaring up high today and the adult male was photographed yesteday which is good news and makes four birds this week. Many thanks to the Motley Crew and Nick Tanner for the bulk of these sightings.
Messers Patient and Papps had the Black Redstarts and Wheatear at the Ferry Lane end...
Fab shot of Mr Red by Alan Reynolds
along with his Wheatear friend...
30-3-13