2023 - New Year, New Challenge

After the effort of doing a London Year List in 2022 I've decided to try a different challenge: to visit 100 sites. Additionally, it will be in a smaller area - Greater London rather than the LNHS recording area and I'll be recording a full species checklist on eBird as well photographing at least one bird per site.

Site 1: London Wetland Centre, January 1st

View from Peacock Hide

I thought I'd start the New Year here for a change and I arrived just after opening time. I headed straight to Dulverton Hide to look for a Bittern and after half an hour one did a brief flight over the far reeds and dropped in out of sight. At WWF Hide there were a few gulls to look through and I found a nice adult Yellow-legged Gull. I spent an hour or so in Peacock hide looking for Dartford Warbler and Jack Snipe but neither showed themselves. There was a Water Pipit skulking on the grazing marsh and Gloria the Goldeneye appeared on the main lake.

Robin

Common Snipe

Teal displaying

Yellow-legged Gull

Site 2: Rainham Marshes, January 2nd

Purfleet Scrape, Rainham Marshes

I met up with my friends on the train at West Ham and we alighted at Purfleet. It was high tide so we went in the reserve as soon as it opened and headed over towards KB Hide. The Barn Owl wasn't showing and there wasn't much to see from the hide so we retreated back to the centre for coffee and cake. Taking the clockwise route we heard Beardies in front of the numbers but they were keeping their heads down in the reeds as there were a lot of togs about.

The Butts hide had most birds with Ruff and Snipe out the front and large numbers of Pintail on Target Pool with Marsh Harrier hunting over the back. We went out at the turnstile to check Aveley Bay now that the tide had dropped. There were plenty of waders including two Grey Plovers and some Avocets but no Dunlin or Black-wits.

Pintail

Ruff

Wigeon

Site 3: Brent Reservoir, January 3rd

The Northern Arm of Brent Reservoir (AKA North Marsh)

I popped up the reservoir for a quick visit in the morning. The Tawny Owl was peeping out from its usual hole as I walked past on my way over to North Marsh. I stopped on the playing fields to feed the Crows and Common Gulls the rest of my xmas turkey which they very quickly devoured. At the main hide there was still only one Snipe, with all the others leaving during the freeze-up. I completed the loop by going along the South Bank and ended up on Neasden Rec to check the goose flock before heading home.

Crow hoping for some more turkey scraps

The Canada Goose flock usually has two Greylags in it

Site 4: Queens Park (Kilburn), January 4th

A rather muddy Queens Park

The formal garden in the southeast corner

Queens Park's bandstand

I decided to spend the morning in the Kilburn area and started off by taking the bus down to Kensal Rise and walking over to Queens Park. I used to live by the park and walked through it daily on the way to work but never recorded any birds there so it seemed an obvious place to visit. It's a typical London park with a large grassy area surrounded by London Planes so isn't particularly inspiring. 

Queens Park does have a formal section with a little scrub so there is somewhere for birds to nest but I only managed a miserly 11 species on a full circuit. It did have breeding Spotted Flycatchers when I lived there in the 1980s but I don't think I actually saw them.

There wasn't much to photograph here so I only managed an out-of-focus Robin

Site 5: Paddington Old Cemetery, January 4th

There were Redwings in the tops of these trees.

A short walk with the entrance on Willesden Lane, this is a site I'd not been to before. It's open daily for the public to use as a green space and has a lot of mature trees and scrub so has more birds than Queens Park. I actually recorded 16 species, about half the total on eBird and has potential as a local patch for anyone living nearby.

Ring-necked Parakeet

Site 6: Grange Park (Kilburn), January 4th

Grange Park

Black-headed Gulls at Grange Park

It was just a short walk along Willesden Lane and over Kilburn High Road to Grange Park. I had popped in here in the past but not seen a great deal. It's a really small park but has more cover than Queens Park and my quick loop produced 12 species including Chaffinch which I wouldn't have expected in Kilburn.

Magpie

Site 7: Green Park, January 5th

Top end of the park bordering Piccadilly

South end looking towards Buck Pal

A couple of buses took me down to Hyde Park Corner, just a short walk away from Green Park. I used to walk through this park sometimes when I worked in Westminster but it's the least birdy of the Royal Parks. My loop of the park just accumulated 13 species, the best of which was probably the trio of Egyptian Geese that flew through the park from St James's. Despite the impressive  list of wildfowl recorded on eBird I think they're all recorded in error as there's no lake in this park.

I suspect there will be a Robin in every site I visit

Woodpigeon - probably another bird in every site

Site 8: St James's Park, January 5th

Lake in St James's Park from Buck Pal end

Southern end with Duck Island to right

I crossed over the Mall and entered St James's Park. This was my regular lunchtime patch when I worked in Westminster although most of my best birds were found when I walked through the park on my way to work. It's easy to complete a lap of the lake in half an hour and I made a few diversions to explore the scrubby areas.

The best birds today were a fully-winged Shelduck that seems to have taken up residence with a couple from the collection and Green and Great Spotted Woodpeckers which were both heard on Duck Island.

Coot - gotta love those toes!

A 'wild' Shelduck, note presence of two wing tips

Moorhen

Site 9: Wanstead Flats, January 6th

With train strikes limiting my travel choices today I headed over to East London. I rarely visit the Flats, usually it's just to twitch something so it was nice to randomly wander around seeing what was there.

pond on west side

Fenced off area for Skylarks

There's a lot of rank grassland and bushes across the Flats.

I didn't turn up anything particularly interesting but did get my first Linnet of the year and added a few species to my rather pathetic Flats list. According to eBird I'm now 22nd in the all time rankings but there's not much chance of catching up with Jono!

Shoveler

Pair of Starlings in the sunshine

Mute Swan

Site 10: Wanstead Park, January 6th

I left the Flats at the top end and walked along Park Road to reach the park. This was a new site for me and I prefer it to the Flats.

Heronry Pond, Wanstead Park

Wanstead Park

I only had a short walk around and didn't visit all the lakes. On my wanderings through the woods I heard a Nuthatch which was another new one this year. It looks a good place to visit in spring so hopefully I'll find time to make another visit.

Great Spotted Woodpecker

Eurasian Teal, I was surprised to find a little group of these displaying in the woods

With rain for most of Saturday I finished the first week of the year on 10 sites, well ahead of target.

Nov 19th-30th: Bittern hunt

The second half of November this year marked the transition from autumn to winter as visible migration petered out except for winter thrushes. Even those are more likely to be seen on hedgerows gobbling Hawthorn berries rather than just flying over. At Brent Reservoir, I virtually stopped my vismig mornings on the Dump as there was nothing flying over. A few Siskins and Redpolls can be found feeding on the alders and Silver Birches around the reservoir.

Lesser Redpoll

One morning I heard a Blackcap in sub-song along the path to the hides at Brent. We usually have a few over-wintering individuals but they’re hard to track down as they’re usually silent. Duck numbers have been going up and it feels like cold weather will be arriving soon although there’s not even been a frost yet.

On the 22nd I wandered up to Fryent CP for a change of view, one of the other large green spaces I can easily walk to. I don’t tend to visit it a lot during the winter months as it is often quiet and the paths are atrociously muddy. It was a nice walk around this morning, helped by it being bright and sunny. Redwings and Fieldfares were in the hedges and a Red Kite circled around over me looking for food although I’m not sure what it was expecting to find.

Fieldfare

Red Kite

The following day I met up with Frank down at the Wetland Centre. Despite coming from opposite sides of London and using public transport we both arrived at the same time. After coffee and cake we headed straight to Dulverton hide to look for Bittern. On our last visit we spent over an hour here and didn’t see one, this time it took just ten minutes before one crawled through the reeds and stopped on the edge for several minutes before slinking back out of view. Over the course of the next half an hour we saw it two more times, including once when it flew along the reeds to another spot.

Bittern

We carried on to the Peacock hide where we were the only birders for a while. I found a second Bittern on the edge of the reeds along Reservoir Lagoon. This one was bolt upright in its sky-pointing stance and from a distance looked like a wooden post. A couple of other birders joined us and found two Stonchats along with a Dartford Warbler on the wader scrape which at least had a bit of water in it. When these birds first turned up a month ago the scrape was bone dry. A second Dartford Warbler had subsequently arrived and after a lot of scanning we managed to see both of them. Water Pipit and Goldeneye have both been seen recently but we couldn’t track down either today.

Bittern

On the 25th I met up with my regular Friday birding friends and at Liverpool Street station and we went up to Cheshunt for another Bittern hunt. Unfortunately we weren’t successful as both Bitterns had been flushed by a working party and had flown to the far side of the lake. We also couldn’t locate the redhead Smew that is back for another winter. It was another sunny day which encouraged the local raptors and we saw at least three Red Kites and four Common Buzzards.

Red Kite

We also explored around Holyfield Hall Farm and Hall Marsh Scrape but didn’t turn up too much else. It was a bit tricky at the latter site as someone’s nicked the benches from the hide and the slats are too low if you stand up!

I popped down to Hyde Park & Kensington Gardens on 28th but didn’t spend a lot of time there as it actually felt cold and there weren’t many birds around apart from Egyptian Geese which seen to have taken over the area near the Round Pond.

I finished the month at Crossness, meeting John & Janet at London Bridge earlier than planned. This was fortuitous as the Barn Owl was showing as we walked past but had gone in to sleep shortly afterwards as a local birder who we met later by the outflow didn’t see it. There weren’t as many waders as on our last visit and all the Wigeon had disappeared but it was still heaving with birds. Two Little Egrets fished from either side of the outflow and the usual Common Sand was there along with a few Redshank plus several Grey and Pied Wagtails.

Little Egret

Redshank

Grey Wagtail

As we walked back beside the area where the Great Reed Warbler was a few years ago we stopped to watch a large flock of Goldfinches bathe in the puddles on the path. Another finch was with them which, at the distance we were at, appeared smaller and darker. As it bathed it flashed a yellow rump but then flew off before we could get close enough to identify it. We waited for a while but the finches had finished their ablutions and some of them were resting in the trees; unfortunately there was no sign of this particular bird so we’ll never know what it was despite our suspicions.

We crossed over to the Southern Marsh which certainly lived up to its name as the path was really wet and there was a large pool at the end of one stretch of boardwalk which we had to wade through. Large numbers of Redwing with a few Fieldfare were again feeding in the hedgerows but there wasn’t much else there until we got to Thamesmere and found a large assortment of wildfowl.

With eleven months of the year now gone, my London Year List has stalled somewhat on 182 species. It’s going to have to be a really amazing December to even reach 190.