Scrubs, Walthamstow & Dartford

I started the week with a visit to two more reasonably close sites. That meant another trip on the 302 bus, albeit going in the opposite direction to last Monday. I changed onto the 52 and got off a stop early as the temporary traffic lights had halted the traffic. I walked along the Harrow Road and went in at the East Entrance. The cemetery gates open at 9am.

Site 40: Kensal Green Cemetery,  March 6th

This extensive cemetery dates back to 1833 and it almost felt that long since I last visited it. In my visits during the mid-1980s I recorded Bullfinch here and I suspect that might be the last time one  was seen here as there's so few of them left in London now. There's a lot of trees and scrub in the cemetery and it runs along the Grand Union Canal so there's a fair bit of birdlife in it. 

For those who like exploring graves, Kensal Green is the resting place of the engineers Sir Marc Isambard Brunel and Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the mathematician Charles Babbage, and the novelists Wilkie Collins, Anthony Trollope and William Makepeace Thackeray; Lord Byron's wife, Oscar Wilde's mother, Charles Dickens' in-laws and Winston Churchill's daughter; and the surgeon who attended Nelson at Trafalgar.

Southern path next to the canal

View from Scrubs Lane

I walked along the southern path then up through the middle and eventually out at the main entrance opposite Hazel Road. I then had a mile walk along Harrow Road and down Scrubs Lane to the next site.

Site 41: Wormwood Scrubs, March 6th

There's a small pedestrian entrance just south of Mitre Bridge at the northeast corner of the Scrubs. There are various paths across the site but I mostly kept to the northern side as that's where most of the better habitat is - the scrub beside the railway. I've only been to this site a couple of times before, the first time was in 2007 when I saw a Richard's Pipit here.

View looking south

The notorious Wormwood Scrubs prison on the southern boundary

Scrub alongside the railway

In the scrub were typical residents such as Long-tailed Tits and other common birds. The site is much better in migration and if I have time, I'll aim for a repeat visit.

Goldfinches

I left at the west end onto Old Oak Common Lane where there is a bus stop. I took a bus into Harlesden town centre and then two more buses to get home.

With poor weather forecast for the rest of the week I decided not to explore any more new sites but instead went back to Walthamstow Wetlands for a quick visit with John & Janet. On our last visit we weren't able to see the Scaup as the path to Number 4 reservoir was closed but it reopened on March 1st.

There was a bit of sleet in the air and it was feeling very wintry as we walked around the reservoir. We'd been told the Scaup was close into the bank this  morning and as walked around the last corner, there it was, only a few metres out.

Scaup

We watched it for a while before the weather got worse and we decided that rather than carry on around the paths, it was time to retire to the cafe.

After a couple more days of bad weather I decided I needed to venture out a little further so on Saturday I decided to explore Dartford Marsh. Being just outside of Greater London, it doesn't count towards my 100 site target but it's a place I'd been meaning to revisit. I used to come here most winters as there was a regular roost of Long-eared Owls but these are sadly long gone.

I took an early train from London Bridge to Dartford and then I aimed for the Darent River Path. This didn't exist when I used to come here so took a bit of finding. I turned left out of the station, over a footbridge across the river and onto Overy Street. Then it was across Millpond Road and up Central Road. The start of the footpath isn't marked and you have to cut through the warehouses to find it. It then follows the east bank of the river all the way to to the Thames.

It opens up a little further north after crossing under University Way and there's views right across Dartford Marsh. It's a really good but under-watched area. There's a lake that has a good selection of wildfowl and a huge mass of loafing gulls, in which I managed to pick out a Caspian.

Lake with loafing gulls

A bit further along I saw two Corn Buntings perched in a hawthorn tree on the bank and another two flew over, calling . These are now really scarce birds in the London Area so it was great to find that they're still here. The river itself held a few ducks, grebes and a single Common Sandpiper.

Little Grebe

Wigeon

Eventually I reached the Thames, roughly opposite the Rainham RSPB Visitor Centre. With the tide being low, a Harbour Seal was resting on the mud. I scanned the bay and then carried on along the Thames path heading east towards the QE2 Bridge.

The Thames path looking East

The path eventually reaches a sewage works and there's some steps over the concrete wall that lead to a footpath that runs back to Dartford. There's a couple of places where you can head west to join Joyce Green Lane and I chose one. Rather than follow it all the way south I walked back along University Way and rejoined the Darent River Path back to the railway station.