13 dunlin, 270 lapwing, 1 grey heron, 40 redshank, 14 black-tailed godwits (still can't see any bar-tailed), 1 curlew, 5 little egrets, 3 grey heron, 2 curlew sandpiper?? 1 kingfisher, 4 blackbirds, 23 cormorants, 1 grey plover, 7 great crested grebes, 8 little grebes, 23 black-headed gulls, 20+ herring gulls, 13 lesser black-backed gulls, 6 pochard, 5 mallard, 60 coot, 14 collared dove, 7 woodpigeon, 25+ starling, 4 magpies.
We had a long walk on the Thames foreshore on the far side of Cliffe Pools today, and certainly stretched our legs. Monty was excellent today, its so great when he more or less keeps to the track we are walking along, rather than wandering away too far, and comes back straight away when called. When I settle down with the telescope he will usually come and sit with me, or even lie down close by, fairly shortly after I stop, and wait patiently for me to get going again. This makes things so easy, and its so delightful that we "work" so well together!
We had a quick look at the Conoco Pool, and picked up the duck for the day, about 5 Pochard, Aythya ferina, new for me on this site, together with a couple of pairs of Mallard, Anas platyrhynchos. We moved on fairly quickly, reaching my favourite vantage point looking at the waders on the far side of the Flamingo Pool, and in particular at the wonderful Black Tailed Godwits. A couple of these were a bit frisky today, but rather confused about who was who, apparently swopping roles, each in turn aggressively trying to be the male! I was able to see the black tails and the striped wings in all the individuals I had good views of, so no Bar Tailed Godwits noted as yet. I also got a grey plover here, with its distinctive black patches under the wings very clearly seen.
Once we got to the seawall overlooking the Thames Estuary, the industrial view became even clearer with the power station on the Essex side looming up in the mist in the distance.
In the picture below, a little further downstream, you can see a small container dock on the far side. The green buoy in both pictures marks the far side of the navigable channel, and as this is fairly close, the ships obviously have to pass close up on the Kent side of the River, as I had already suspected from previous visits to Cliffe Pools when I saw their superstructures gliding past apparently very close indeed! No ships seen going by today, perhaps because it was very definitely low tide.
Beside this industrial hive of activity, sheep were calmly grazing, quite oblivious to the views of man's activities around them - the North Kent grazing marshes are traditionally famous for the very high quality of the lamb! The Isle of "Sheppey" itself is actually named for its sheep! The overall feeling was one of isolation, with hardly anyone else seen and very little noise from the works around. The wind was blowing strongly, increasing the feeling of being out "on the edge" of civilisation.
The industry includes a lot of gravel or ballast extraction, with huge heaps of spoil scattered across the landscape, giant oil terminals and refinery operations, and of course, the shipping:
Other grazers seen on the marsh today included two very large black bulls, the first of which was, rather unusually, actually sitting down.
and these rather traditional looking horses, perhaps belonging to travellers
As we got further along into the loneliness of the marsh I picked up two small dunlin or sandpiper-like waders with very white rumps and clearly defined black tail bars wandering along the bottom of the right hand bank in this drainage ditch - with this tail pattern showing so obviously, these birds could only have been Green Sandpipers, a reasonably rare bird, but seen regularly along the North Kent coast. What an absolutely great sight, even if I only recognised its significance in retrospect! This may be one of the rarest bird I have seen since a Baird's sandpiper vagrant from the Americas glimpsed from a very long way off on a school bird watching trip to Cley Marshes in Norfolk when I was 17 or so. If the white rumps didn't make them such a simple bird to identify, I would have thought I was mistaken, but because I saw this one feature so clearly I am as certain as I can be that the identification was good.
and then we got to some large shallow pools, where the shallows at this far end were covered in hundreds of lapwings, together with some 20 Redshank and about 12 Dunlin (its several years since I last saw Dunlin, they are really cheeky and brave little waders) with 1 rather odd looking grey heron, which I think I had seen yesterday on one of the main Cliffe pools themselves. It just sits oddly, rather too "horizontal" in its overall body, both today and yesterday, but I can't see what else it could be.
Walking fairly briskly, I put up a kingfisher from below me on the bank and then as I turned the corner of the track to head back to the car park, I got fairly close to this couple of great crested grebes, the one on the right being rather "warmer" retaining a fair bit of its summer plumage,
I caught this black-headed gull in flight, but not a very sharp photo I'm afraid
On the chalky track on the way back, I saw some chicory in flower, really late in the year. Its blue flowers are quite disconcerting!
The light was really going now, and to finish off, here is Monty on the last section of track, looking ahead into the setting sun!
We had a long walk on the Thames foreshore on the far side of Cliffe Pools today, and certainly stretched our legs. Monty was excellent today, its so great when he more or less keeps to the track we are walking along, rather than wandering away too far, and comes back straight away when called. When I settle down with the telescope he will usually come and sit with me, or even lie down close by, fairly shortly after I stop, and wait patiently for me to get going again. This makes things so easy, and its so delightful that we "work" so well together!
We had a quick look at the Conoco Pool, and picked up the duck for the day, about 5 Pochard, Aythya ferina, new for me on this site, together with a couple of pairs of Mallard, Anas platyrhynchos. We moved on fairly quickly, reaching my favourite vantage point looking at the waders on the far side of the Flamingo Pool, and in particular at the wonderful Black Tailed Godwits. A couple of these were a bit frisky today, but rather confused about who was who, apparently swopping roles, each in turn aggressively trying to be the male! I was able to see the black tails and the striped wings in all the individuals I had good views of, so no Bar Tailed Godwits noted as yet. I also got a grey plover here, with its distinctive black patches under the wings very clearly seen.
Once we got to the seawall overlooking the Thames Estuary, the industrial view became even clearer with the power station on the Essex side looming up in the mist in the distance.
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