Purfleet Marshes

This afternoon I decided to take a stroll around the RSPB's reserve at Purfleet, which they call Rainham Marshes, and everyone else calls Purfleet Marshes, on account of its location. I was optimistic as I boarded the train at Upminster station, there was a bit of a breeze but nothing to prevent a good day's birding. However it didn't take long waiting on platform "-12b" as the broken display called it, at Barking station, for my mood to start sinking. A strong breeze had started to build up  Low cloud seemed to press down on me like a grey hangover. As I arrived on the reserve I found myself without my tobacco, and had to return to the station to buy some more. Returning to the road I locked up my bike and, passing an interesting leucistic Woodpigeon (Columba palumbens) and a number of Goldfinches at the feeding station and trudged off in search of the elusive Bearded Tits (Panarus biarmicus) which, I am told, appear in the reeds just beyond the first hide. I've been looking for them several times, and have told that they crop up when you least expect them too. My mood already tinged with pessimism, I wondered whether that should make me hopeful. Evidently, in fact, it made me too hopeful, and despite trudging up and down the path by the reeds they were said to inhabit, I found nothing. Not a pinging call or a rich fawn brown back disappearing into the reeds, nothing. I felt a single drop of rain fall against the back of my hand.

Odd Woodpigeon.

Even a singing Skylark (Alauda arvensis) as I approached the old shooting butts did little to brighten my mood. I had descended into birding despondancy. I kept walking until I passed the dragonfly pools and reached the monstrosity of the rifle butts "hide," effectively a small contemporary house with large windows overlooking the pools. I got distant views of a couple of Avocets (Recurvirostra avocetta) in front of a large flock of Black Tailed Godwit (Limosa limosa) on the target pools, and saw some of the usual waterfowl, Shelduck, Mallard, Shoveller, Mute Swan...But nothing out of the ordinary. The Peregrine was absent from his usual pylon, and a murmuration of starlings flocking and swirling around as they came to roost on another pylon were one of the few highlights of my walk back to the centre. It never came on to rain, and at the time I thought rain would have been better than this bank of cloud and close, muggy atmosphere. A nice Little Egret let me get up fairly close, and take a couple of blurry photos before he was off over the water. A very smart drake Pintail dabbled in the shallows of Aveley Flash. There were reed buntings and blue tits busying themselves around the feeders in the woodland area. But I wanted to see something exciting. I wanted nature to surprise me, to impress me, as it so often does, and it wasn't doing that today.

Murmuration. Still good.

I returned to the pushbike and decided to take the long way home, or at least as far as Rainham station. I hit the Thames Path, where I was accosted by an alternately aggressive and very timid black labrador, barking and growling  until I allowed my eyes to meet its, which resulted in it's breaking my gaze, running away from me, and then coming back barking and growling. I gave its owner an angry look but she seemed to be happy to let the beast bother me for a while. There is little worse than a Large Yappy Dog (Canis irritantissimus*) As she passed me I smiled and told her I was sure the dog was only being freindly.

Electricity Generating Soup Stirrers.

Industrial Decay.

Lorries crawled slowly over the QEII bridge across the Thames, and I continued past the mud, past the cries of oystercatchers and remembered how much I love the river. A few Linnets (Carduelis cannabina) on the brambles beside the sea wall path caught my eye and they lifted my spirits. I don't know what it is about these smart little finches with their rich brown backs which makes me such a fan, perhaps it is that they are elegant and socialble, all the things I wasn't feeling. A Spotted Redshank had apparantly been seen that day so I checked out any redshanks I saw but all had the white triangle on the trailing edges of their wings, making them common redshanks. Ahead of me the wind turbines at the old Ford works turned lazily as if stirring a thick grey soup. Metal barges rotted with rust on the mud, and crows perched on a forlorn sculpture of a deep sea diver in Purfleet bay. Industry decayed. My nose was unexpectedly assaulted by the Veola landfill site (hindsight is a wonderful thing) as I continued on my way. The light had just begun to fade, it was a little past five, as I reached the back of the landfill site and was able to proceed over the back corner of the RSPB reserve, the fragment which remains open and uncontained by ditches and barbed wire fence. Initially I didn't think much of it. Some of the ditches carried in them some wind-blown detritus from the Veola site. But then it all changed.

A freind of mine whom I met in Greece, who has some Native American ancestors, told me about birds as medicine, and how they can heal. He spoke of Hawk medicine and Owl medicine, and these were his favourite, we would go looking around our camp site and around the lagoon in search of them in the evening. I am sure his ancestors did not limit their use of this medicine to seeing and encountering these birds around, but nontheless, I enjoyed his symbolism.  In Greece we saw mainly Little Owls (Athene noctua) there, as recognised in folklore and on the shield of the goddess from whom they take their generic name. I understood my freind's ancestral understanding of birds of prey as the acknowledgement and excitement they can bring.

Anyway, a grey day at the Rainham end of the RSPB reserve, and a scenario my American freind would be familiar with.  I see a crow chasing something slightly larger than itself, and immediately I turn my bins on the pair. The crow broke off and the other bird continued floating toward me, low over the tops of the brown Phragmites. It was pale, with darker markings on the top side of the wing, and as the bird turned side on it appeared distinctly flattened at its front end. Owls' faces look strange in profile. It stopped in mid air, spreading its wings wide above it affording me a view of its nearly white underside, and dived into the reeds. A second or two later the Short Eared Owl (Asio flammeus) reappeared. I couldn't tell if it's hunt had been successful, it appeared to carry its talons slighly lower suggesting it was, but it climbed away over the bank which separated this side of the reserve from the other, and out of sight. This was only my second sighting of a Short-Eared owl, my first being on Two Tree near Leigh on Sea in about 2005. I suppose I simply haven't been frequenting the right places, and I need to get to Elmley by the end of March, but it is a very special bird. As a kid I was fascinated by owls, and loved Barn Owls long before I ever saw one in the wild. Seeing it on this wet island, on a spot from which I could hear the roar of traffic on the A13, is an experience which leaves me dumbstruck.

I rode the rest of the way home, following the reserve as far as Rainham, part of which still looks like an old village, and then going over Ingrebourne Hill and chasing the Ingrebourne valley, past the grumpy Canada Geese at the Albyn's farm end of Hornchurch Country Park, past the swams and herons where the little river widens, past the pill boxes and other wartime relics, all the way to Upminster, feeling utterly elated, and wondering if a Tawny Owl might sail over me.  It didn't, but one owl felt like more than enough medicine.

*Not a real scientific name.