An afternoon at Rainham Marshes

Here are some pictures and a couple of videos from yesterday's visit to Rainham Marshes. I've included a few that are not good photographs but are quite interesting.

The Woodchat Shrike, visible for several days previously, had disappeared and no one there had seen it all day. But a good consolation prize was a female Kingfisher bringing a fish to her young.

There were plenty of Sedge Warblers. One showed well in a hawthorn bush by the river wall.

It called and sang, though there wasn't a clear view through the leaves then.

A Linnet settled in a flowering dogwood bush.

There were several Whitethroats. One sang from a bramble.

A Lesser Whitethroat could also be heard but wouldn't come into sight.

A single male Wheatear flew around on the edge of the river.

A Goldfinch ate dandelion seeds that had fallen off the seed heads into the grass.

There was a very distant view of a Corn Bunting on a wire fence ...

... and another of a Cuckoo flying past a pylon.

Little Egrets waded around in the muddy shallows.

Common Terns are nesting on a raft recently provided for them. One flew up to scare off a Black-Headed Gull which had been circling ominously.

A Little Grebe did that typical grebe shrug (which, a regular readers of this blog will remember, is mentioned by Jane Austen in Persuasion).

Two Avocets had a chick each. Here are a parent and chick ...

... and a slightly closer look at the other chick. Its bill is already turned up in that charming Avocet curve.

A Lapwing buzzed a family of Canada Geese.

Marsh Frogs were making a racket all over the reserve.

A Peacock butterfly perched on a reed.

A blackthorn bush had a web spun by caterpillars which I think are those of the Lackey Moth, Malacosoma neustria.

An early visit, then on to Rainham

There will be two blog posts today if all is well, as I am going to Rainham Marshes this afternoon. There was time for a quick walk round the park, but first two interesting videos by Theodore: a Whitethroat singing by the Queen's Temple, coping as well as it can with the shrieks of the pestilential Rose-Ringed Parakeets ...

... and a Green Woodpecker preening on a trunk.

One of the Robins at Mount Gate came out of the bushes and looked up expecting a pine nut. He took several. Who can say no to a Robin?

The Wren in the leaf yard is unconcerned with human beings as long as you don't bring up the camera too quickly.

And a pair of Feral Pigeons canoodling under the Henry Moore sculpture didn't care who was watching.

A Pied Wagtail stared from the jetty at the Lido, a good hunting station as there are insects both in the air and in the grooves of the non-slip matting.

One of the young Grey Herons from this year's early nest on the Serpentine island was under the parapet of the Italian Garden fishing in the reeds.

An adult took up a vantage point on a post to the east of the Lido swimming area.

The Great Crested Grebe pair from the east end of the island dozed comfortably together by the boat hire platform.

The Coots' nest on the post at Peter Pan has been raided by gulls yet again. In all the years I have been coming to the park the nest here has only succeeded once in fledging young, and that was a freak result against all the odds.

The male Mute Swan of the pair that nested on the Serpentine island last year, ring 4FYG, is the third in the pecking order in the park, after the killer swan (4DTH) who is currently busy with his mate nesting on the Long Water, and 4FUK who is also pretty horrible. He felt like bullying the lower ranking swans and started throwing his weight around.

All that's left of the Greylag Geese's breeding attempt this year: one pair with two goslings ...

... and another with one.

The park is not a good place for goslings, and the more savvy Greylags and Canadas are now breeding elsewhere and bringing in their young when they can fly.

Somehow the Mallard at the Lido has managed to save five ducklings from the local menace of gulls, crows and dogs.

Joan Chatterley was at Walthamstow Wetlands where she got this picture of a Common Tern. We never seem to get these in the park any more, probably as a result of the opening of better places for them such as Walthamstow and Barnes.

Part two, from Rainham, will be up quite late tonight as I have a lot of pictures to go through,

Pictures from all over

A Goldcrest in the yew at the bridge caught a tiny insect.

Wrens are singing, scolding and dashing about all round the Long Water. Here are some of them.

The Coal Tit at Mount Gate called loudly for me to produce a pine nut. Once they trust you they become very demanding.

A Carrion Crow at the Lido was eating some gruesome morsel, fortunately not from any of the young birds we've seen on the blog -- there had been no further casualties.

A Magpie rummaged through grass cuttings to find insects, and did get one.

Theodore got a good picture of one of the Whitethroats at the Queen's Temple ...

... and Ahmet Amerikali found one of the Reed Warblers showing well in a tree, rather than obscured by reeds as usual.

Tom was at Rainham Marshes, where he got a remarkable shot of a female Linnet feeding a young one ...

... a Short-Eared Owl ...

... and a Woodchat Shrike, a bird I have never seen and it was Tom's first sighting at Rainham. If all goes well I shall be there tomorrow, but heaven knows if I shall be lucky enough to see it.

The female Peregrine flew on to the barracks tower at 2.45, alone. Theodore has been seeing more of the Peregrines in the Cromwell Road and I've been seeing less of them here, which strengthens the likelihood of them being the same pair. But, as I've said before, the only thing that will settle that beyond reasonable doubt is seeing a red plastic ring on the left leg of a female in the Cromwell Road, and so far no one has managed this.

The young Lesser Black-Backed Gull that may be the two-year-old offspring of Pigeon Eater was lording it over the territory near the Dell restaurant, with the nearest other gull 100 yards away, This is exactly how Pigeon Eater behaves, driving off all rivals, and it looks as if this one is taking after its father.

The Great Crested Grebes' nest on the Long Water where I saw the chick, but was then empty, was occupied again today. It's impossible to tell from that distance whether there's a chick there or not unless it comes right out on the water.

The other nest also had a sitting grebe, visibly the male of the pair as you can tell by his wide crest.

Joan Chatterley got a good picture of a parent and a chick at Walthamstow Wetlands, where the supply of fish is better than on the heavily Cormorant-fished Long Water so grebes can breed successfully in early spring.

The eldest Egyptian gosling at the Lido has lost almost all of its juvenile down and should look smart again in a couple of days.

The female Mute Swan that we were worried about was back on the nest, but it's just been reported that the eggs have been stolen. Sad as that is, it's probably for the best, as her absence from the nest would probably have let them get cold enough to kill the embryos, so that she would have sat on them well past their expected hatching time and perhaps starved to death. She needs to give up the attempt, come out on the lake again and feed herself back to health.

Grey and soggy

A dim day of persistent drizzle kept most of the small birds sheltering in the bushes, but a Robin ignored it and sang cheerfully in the leaf yard.

A male Blackcap appeared for a moment across the path. He was flying about busily with his mate collecting insects for a nest in the bushes. He had a small lump on his bill. It didn't look like an avian pox blister.

A Dunnock hopped up the steps by the bridge.

Starlings probed the wet grass by the Italian Garden to find larvae. It's advisable to eat the find at once or another Starling may grab it.

A Pied Wagtail trotted through the foam at the edge of the Serpentine.

Another was using the landing stage as a hunting platform to catch midges.

Also after midges were Swifts ...

House Martins ...

... and Sand Martins.

While I was trying to grab these pictures a Grey Heron flew past the Lido restaurant.

The young ones looked out of the nest on the island. They'll be climbing about soon. Let's hope this doesn't cause friction with the sitting bird in the other nest, which is uncomfortably close.

Pigeon Eater and his mate were away and their place was taken by a two-year-old Lesser Black-Backed Gull. It was definitely trying to hunt pigeons, and made a lunge at a couple but missed. It's tempting to think that this was Pigeon Eater's offspring from a couple of years ago.

A Great Crested Grebe visited its mate on the second nest on the Long Water.

However, I haven't see any activity at the first nest for a couple of days.

A Coot spent some time feeding one of its seven chicks in the Italian Garden fountains.

All was well at the Mute Swans' nest at the Serpentine outflow, despite the presence of foxes across the path in the Dell.

However, there are reports that the female swan nesting at the boathouse is ill, and when I passed the nest it was the male sitting on it and two eggs had rolled out again. The prospect isn't good. No nest here has ever succeeded.

The Egyptian Geese had taken their goslings across the horse track to browse.

The Mallard family had just been feeding there and were returning to the lake. The ducklings now look like smaller copies of their mother. No doubt some of them are drakes but they won't start to look different for a while.