July 24th-31st: black and white herons

After a week’s holiday in Scotland where we escaped the 40 degree temperatures it was back to London and thankfully more normal summer temperatures. On Sunday I popped along to Brent Reservoir and found a Garganey. It’s already been a good year for them locally and I’m not sure if this was a new bird or one from earlier but this one stayed all week and appears to be a young male.

One of the pair of Dabchicks have youngsters while the wader passage is beginning to pick up with five Lapwing and six sandpipers (three of both Common and Green). By the next day these had risen to four Common and eight Greens. There wasn’t too much change the following day but on Wednesday I discovered Brent’s third Cattle Egret on a beached raft with some Coot. It eventually walked over to the roosting gulls on the mud where it blended in a lot better. Unlike the previous two it remained all day which allowed a few of the regulars to add it to their Brent list.

Cattle Egret blending in with the local Coots

It was quite relaxed when with the gulls but at one point it made the mistake of flying up to a willow tree to roost on its own. A Magpie decided to harass it and kept getting nearer and attempting to bite it before the egret decided it had had enough and flew down out of the way. I’ve not seen this behaviour from Magpies towards the Little Egrets which occur here quite regularly so it clearly recognised it as being different. When Little Egrets first started turning up here Carrion Crows used to do the same thing but they don’t bother to annoy them anymore.

The Cattle Egret unsurprisingly wasn’t present on Thursday but I did manage to catch up with the Dunlin which arrived after I left yesterday; this was Brent’s first of the year as there weren’t any in spring. Also on the wader front, there were now nine Common and nine Green Sandpipers. Things are looking good for a rare wader this autumn!

Also new in was a fresh juvenile Mediterranean Gull in its smoky-silvery finery. I rarely see them in this plumage and there’s only a short window before they start to moult to first-winter plumage.

Juvenile Mediterranean Gull

On Friday it was over to Rainham for my first visit there for several weeks. We decided not to start at Rainham West as it was going to be hot and all of Wennington Marsh is now dry so we met up a little later than usual and took the train to Purfleet. It didn’t take long to find one of the newly returned Yellow-legged Gulls as it was just about the first bird we saw. It was low tide so we walked up to Aveley Bay for a scan of the waders, picking up a Curlew in a small group of Black-tailed Godwits along with Dunlin and a trio of Avocets.

Yellow-legged Gull

As we walked back to the centre I looked over the reserve and could see a distant Great Egret. By the time we reached the centre Pat had found two Great Egrets there so we had a look in the scope before ordering coffee and cake. I’d barely taken a bite out of my cake when a radio message from Pat had us leaping up out of our seats as he’d found a drake Common Scoter on the river. Luckily we could see it from the centre although the incoming tide was fast taking it upriver. This was a new bird for my London year list, now up to 172 so I was particularly pleased with it. Although they regularly turn up in London they can often be tricky to catch up with as they tend not to stay long.

Fully refreshed we walked around the reserve although it was a little quiet. The Spoonbills of recent days weren’t visible but they were seen much later in the day so must have been napping out of sight. At Butts hide there were at least seven Little Ringed Plovers and a few Yellow Wagtails flew over. Two Peregrines zoomed over the Target Dust Bowl while we had lunch. We left through the turnstile as the Scoter was back in Aveley Bay and had much better views as it was closer. As it was getting hot we called back into the centre for a celebratory Magnum (ice cream rather than one of my favourite rock groups!) before heading back to Purfleet station.

I finished the month with another two days at Brent, partly because the rail network was closed on Saturday because of strike action. I met a couple of Brent birders in the hide and each scan of the mud seemed to produce more waders. They’d already found our first Snipe of the autumn and the Dunlin was still present but a lot closer today.

Dunlin

I picked up the juv Med Gull again amongst the large flock of Black-heads. It was presumably the same bird as a couple of days ago. The gull flock suddenly took flight as a large dark shape flew in. It was clearly a heron, could it be a Purple? It landed at the back of the mud and we grilled it but the plumage was all wrong, black instead of brown and the shape was just that of a Grey Heron. But not just a Grey Heron, a melanistic Grey Heron. I would have called it a Black Heron but there’s already a bird with that name in Africa – sometimes called the Umbrella Bird and likely to be familiar with anyone who’s been to Gambia.

I had seen a melanistic Grey Heron before, many years ago at East Tilbury and it’s a curious beast, being mostly black with just a hint of normal plumage being visible. Interestingly this bird behaved strangely as well, feeding deep inside the reed bed and constantly catching and eating small prey. They appeared to be newts which was what a Purple Heron gorged itself on when one spent a few days at Brent in 1999.

melanistic Grey Heron, photo by Steve Blake

So, another month is over and I added two birds to my London year list. And now we’re really into ‘proper’ autumn, hopefully the next few months will be even more productive.