Still no Swallows!

On Sunday, the sun came back, and, in recognition of the arrival of the Easter holiday and keen to try out the new ‘scope my father bought, we decided to head down to RSPB Purfleet, and this time, managed to arrive during the site’s opening hours.  Lapwings were about as usual, doing their wheeling thing over the wetlands, and Wigeon and Shoveller numbers were well down on what we had seen during the winter. We proceeded at first to the wooded area around the former Cordite store, an area, now gone to woodland, protected by embankments designed to contain any explosion in what was, during the site’s military days, which lasted from the Napoleonic Wars to the 1970s, basically an ammunition dump. More than one chiffchaff could be heard singing away with its distinct, repetitive chiff-chiff-chaff call, and a partially leucistic blue tit, with a white face, hung upside down in a tree pecking at the buds.

Partially leucistic blue tit.

Clinging Dunnock

We got to the area where the feeders are, past a friendly robin who perched on the end of a handrail, and allowed us to get very close to him. A pair of Dunnocks were around, and at one point I observed one of these clinging to the side of one of the feeders. Surely this is a behaviour that these smart little ground feeding birds have only mastered in recent years? Several male reed buntings were also around, wearing their jet black hoods, part of their summer breeding plumage. We were also surprised to see a handsome and very endearing brown rat foraging at the base of the feeders.  I like rats and find them very charismatic beasts, I wonder if the legendary colony of Black Rats (Rattus rattus) can still be found near the docks in Tilbury. I would love to see one, they are among the most endangered mammals in the country, persecution, and the arrival of the Brown Rat (R. norvegicus) having largely wiped them out.  This Brown Rat was feeding next to a Collared Dove who seemed completely unperturbed by his rodent dinner guest.

handsome Brown Rat

From the Ken Barrat hide, we saw a handsome Snipe, presumably a passage migrant, rummaging in the grass with his remarkable beak, and watched what I’m sure was a Peregrine circling at height, a stocky falcon flying on pointed wings. This was my first Peregrine of the year and my first at Purfleet for some time.  

Leaving the hide we made our way to one of the platforms where a birder with another scope had his eye on a pair of Garganey across the water. Garganeys are small, neat looking ducks, modelled in grey and brown, without any of the metallic gaudiness of their cogenerics.  The handsome male wore a bright white eye stripe on his brown head, and the female stuck close to him.  They became the first scarcer bird I saw with the new scope. Likely to move North in the next few days, they are unusual amongst British ducks being a summer visitor, breeding here and wintering further south.

My folks decided the coffee and cakes of the visitors centre were calling them and I struck out alone to complete the rest of the circuit. Wader passage was in full swing, and a group of Ruff hung out by one of the pools in the Marshland discovery zone. The flock included beige-fronted youngsters, big adult males with bright orange legs, and smaller adult females. Ruffs are very variable in size and plumage and it is sometimes difficult to recognise them. The famed neck collars of the males in lek only develop when they get to their breeding grounds, and disappear soon after lekking is over, but I am sure one of the males I saw, the largest of them, had a patch of fluffy white feathers on his neck which must’ve been the beginning of his spring headgear. A spotted redshank with black summer feathers on his breast was also with them, and a familiar sound, that of Marsh Frogs calling, could be heard, a strange croaking, produced by inflating air sacs behind the frogs’ eyes, could be heard around the Marshland discovery zone. They should only get louder as the season goes on, the first time I heard them a year or two ago the sound was almost deafening and has to be heard to be believed.

Marsh Marigold

Outside the Marshland Discovery Zone, with its hides, stood a clump of marsh marigold with bright yellow, cup-like flowers, and large, deep green leaves, contrasting with the still brown phragmites. A few new shoots of the reed had begun to emerge from the water around it. Still no Swallows, or even Sand Martins, usually earlier to arrive, were to be seen.  The waders and garganey are starting to move through-but where are the hirundines?