Daily Yaffle: August birding

It's been quite a slow start to autumn birding in London this year but it's started to pick up this month, especially since the August Bank Holiday. Willow Warblers have been particularly thin on the ground and there hasn't been a good passage of flycatchers and chats so far.

Continuing spells of hot and sunny weather with very little rain has also had an effect on the wader passage with most of them heading straight over rather than stopping off. At my local patch of Dagenham Chase we had a good two day purple patch with four Avocets and a Black-tailed Godwit on the 12th and four Greenshank the following day.

Avocets

Greenshanks

Having missed a single Avocet there in spring, I was fortunately close by this time round as I was at Beam Valley CP when the news broke so I only had to cross over the railway line and dash up to The Slack to connect. By the time I'd walked around to the far side just ten minutes later they had disappeared along with the godwit.

It was almost a similar story the next day when I found the flock of Greenshanks. Within a couple of minutes three of them flew off but fortunately for all the other patch year listers the fourth bird stayed. And then some as it remained in situ for the rest of the month.

Greenshank

On the Bank Holiday Monday I decided to head out early to Rainham Marshes to vismig from the top of the tip, specifically for Tree Pipit. The plan paid off and I got the first of four 'Tripits' flying over within 20 minutes of arriving. Even better was to come when Samuel Levy and I saw a Merlin flying the tip carrying prey. I usually don't think about this falcon until October but there are a few late August records.

Another wader that I caught up with later in the month was a Golden Plover at Rainham. They used to winter in large numbers at several sites in London but they've declined so much that there's now just one small flock left, at Fairlop which can be hard to find and I missed them twice in winter so it was good to get one on the autumn passage.

I wasn't so lucky with the Osprey which appeared several times over the reserve when my back was turned! And I also managed to miss a large flock of Cattle Egrets that flew east along the river. Even without these I still managed to get up to 146 species at Rainham by the end of August.

One of other interesting birds to turn up at Rainham this month was the flock of four juvenile Ruddy Shelducks. They spent most of their time in Aveley Bay, feeding on the mud at low tide and behaving very much like wild birds. They're most probably from the German/Swiss population which regularly fly to the Netherlands to moult and overshoot, regularly arriving on the East Coast of England every autumn. Although this European population isn't truly wild, it is a self-sustaining population so if this can be verified then these birds would be deemed countable when they turn up in the UK.

Ruddy Shelducks

On a few occasions the Ruddy Shelducks were joined by a fifth bird but it wasn't another Ruddy Shelduck but a similar looking Cape Shelduck which has been seen further west along the Thames since July.

Cape Shelduck at Barking Riverside in July - note the grey head.

The final day of August was forecast to have early showers and an easterly breeze, combined with an incoming tide these were perfect conditions for a river-watch so I decided on an early start and arrived at Purfleet station just after 6am. By the time I walked down to the river wall it just started to rain. I didn't have long to wait until the tern passage started as a Sandwich Tern squawked over the Thames.

I was soon joined by more keen river watchers and during the morning we recorded a strong passage of four species of tern - Arctic, Common, Sandwich and Black. News from further down river kept us going but the skuas failed to come up to our stretch of the Thames. After a break for coffee and a much deserved bacon bap, we abandoned plans to scour the woodland for migrants and just stayed on the river wall until after high tide. A trio of Spoonbills landed on Purfleet scrape and after a short feed they flew south over the river towards Dartford. It ended up being a really good day and a fine way to wrap up the month.