Southend meets the Mediterranean.

 Southend Pier stretches over a mile out into the Thames Estuary, from the newly designated City of Southend, on Essex’ Estuary coast.  It was built in the 19^th Century to load and unload deep hulled sailing vessels, regardless of the state of the tide. Today it lives on, and is proudly proclaimed the longest pleasure pier in the world. For those from out of area, the River Thames here is several miles broad, the North coast of Kent sometimes lost in the haze on a misty day, the water is saline, the fish which swim beneath are marine, and the tidal range is substantial, leaving vast mudflats when the tide is low.  On a sunny day, it is a pleasant, if not a short stroll, out along the historic wooden boards, until you can really feel surrounded by water, a long way from the noise and bustle of Southend’s Sea Front, where dizzying theme parks and noisy arcades dominate. It is a place, in winter at least, of unexpected tranquility, and also, unexpected wildlife.

Mediterranean Gull, Southend Pier, January 2023

On the day of our visit frost, and caution had closed the historic boards when we arrived, so we embarked on the new, green, battery-powered train that has replaced the classic blue diesels, which are now reduced to waiting rooms and curiosities at the two pier stations.

Mediterranean Gull on Southend Pier. 

Upon exiting the pier train, we were met by one of our avian stars, an adult Mediterranean Gull (Ichthyaetus melanocephalus) which perched on one of the pastel painted beach huts, no doubt a coffee kiosk in high season. The Mediterranean Gull is uniquely beautiful among British gulls, and, always, in recent years, the most numerous Gull at the end of the Pier. As an adult, it creates the impression of a near all-white bird, its upper wings only lightly shaded in silver-grey.  In winter a black ‘smear’ creeps back from behind its eye, in contrast with the distinct dark ‘spot’ of winter plumage Black Headed Gulls (Chroicocephlus ridibundus), probably the nearest confusion species.  This commoner species was out here too, though in smaller numbers, a little smaller than the Med Gulls, with darker red to the legs and bill

Mediterranean Gull, Southend Pier.

As its name suggests the Mediterranean Gull is something of a newcomer to these shores, having  for most of its known history been confined to a few small colonies around the Eastern Mediterranean, the Black Sea and Turkey. Here they bred in relatively small numbers under the baking summer sun.  The Med Gull was never the characteristic Gull of the Mediterranean region- that honour goes to the Yellow-Legged Gull, essentially, visually at least, a Herring Gull with yellow legs, or a Lesser Black Back with a paler back. Mediterranean Gulls are not your regular holiday seagull- though I did once see a pair drift over a Spanish beach.   Tied to the coast, in winter they seem to wander the Mediterranean outside of their breeding season.  In the latter decades of the 20^th Century, something changed for the Mediterranean Gull, and the species began to establish small colonies in the South of France and in Spain, and later on the coasts of Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands, on the North Sea coast of Europe.  Now it breeds fairly abundantly in Southern England, along both the channel and the North Sea coasts, the odd pair pitching up at big Black Headed Gull Colonies such as at Two Tree Island, or forming colonies of their own on the shingle of Rye Harbour in Kent.  A spectacularly beautiful Gull in any season, in summer they become even more impressive, sporting jet black heads, with white eye rings, contrasting strongly with the brown hood of the Black Headed Gull, as reflected in its name in several European languages, for example, the Dutch Zwartkopmeeuw, causing consternation for international birders who neglect their scientific names.  Their white wings are all the more vivid in the summer sunshine.

Here on Southend Pier in the vague January haze, their wings still look bright, lacking black tips or contrasting leading edges that most common comparable species possess. But as someone passes, dropping a few chips, the angelic looking Med Gulls reveal themselves every bit as opportunistic and adaptive as their more familiar cousins, and they dive from their pastel beach-hut perches onto the dropped bounty, noisily squabbling among themselves for our wasted food.

Turnstone, Southend Pier

Another bird likes to hang out on the Pier’s end, another confiding opportunist, not afraid to pick up some of our scraps, and this one is adorable. Little bigger than a Starling, Turnstones, or Ruddy Turnstones (Arenaria interpes) as they are internationally known, are world-travellers, some of them crossing the Atlantic to reach our shores from Greenland and Northern Canada. There seems forever to be a population of these impossibly charismatic, charming little shorebirds on the move, and despite not occurring in the British Isles as a Breeding species, they seem to be here almost all year, absent only in May and June.  They can often be found on pebbly shores, turning stones, sometimes, in an unlikely display of strength, quite large stones, to hunt for the invertebrates underneath. They are unfussy about tucking into any sea-washed carcass that may turn up too. But on Southend Pier, running about among the feet of the visitors, and the colourful mini-golf course, they have learned to make a reasonable living from what we leave behind. Leftover fishing bait, chunks of Lugworm or Ragworm, probably extracted locally, seem to be a favourite, but a bit of sandwich won’t go amiss either. Hundreds of them roost on a small, wave-lapped slipway, and can reliably be seen there at high tide.  I suspect these smart little migrants tend to be unnoticed by most of the pier’s visitors,  but I find them extraordinarily photogenic. I have blogged about them before.  Have a browse. It’s there somewhere.

Turnstone, Southend Pier

Birds are not the only wildlife causing a stir at the end of the Pier. Mammals too, are in evidence. A pair of young Grey Seals raise their heads above the surface, and gaze up with appealing watery eyes. Recently afforded full legal protection, these popular piscivores are often encountered in estuaries, and despite the risk of ship collision, both our wild species of seal seem to be thriving, with Common Seals sometimes hauled out and sunning themselves on mudflats right in to Dartford and Rainham, the other side of London’s Dartford Crossing.  Grey Seals seem less abundant locally, but they are capable of travelling substantial distances.  These playful youngsters chased each other about, and eyed with curiosity the humans taking in the winter sun and sea air. I wondered if they occasionally take advantage of the growing popularity of catch-and-release among sea anglers, and how many small fish had been compassionately and carefully released into the green water, still bewildered and gasping, to immediately encounter the toothy and powerful maw of a Grey Seal.

Grey Seals, Southend Pier, January 2022. Photo by Emma Bickford. 

We walked back along the pier, toward the coast, and the noise, leaving these three wildlife stars behind us, as skeins of Brent Geese, another Essex icon, made their way across the cold blue sky.

Southend Pier

I love South Essex

Strolling on West Canvey Marshes this morning, the flat, damp expanse of grazing marshes filling the space between the snaking mud channel of Pitsea creek, and the Canvey Way Avenue of Remembrance, as the A130 becomes when it crosses onto the “island,” and in the shadow of the huge former Coryton Oil Refinery, and its docks, I was struck by something. South Essex, you are flipping beautiful. Never change what you are.

Black Tailed Godwit at West Canvey Marshes

The water on the reserve was high, and there were puddles on the paths. These wet coastal meadows are a typical local habitat, sculpted by centuries of moderately intensive human land use, the coastal grazing marshes. The reserve is still, declare the information boards the RSPB have installed about, a working farm, and cattle graze its lush swards. The pool beside the A130 was attended by busy Black Tailed Godwits, prodding about on its grassy margins, and Lapwings stood on its banks.  The gentle mews of Common Gull, and the whistles of Wigeon, striking ducks with bold yellow stripes on tops of their heads seemed to fill the air, a winter chorus, despite the constant competition from the traffic just a few metres away.   These calls are evocative of the cold winter air, these birds have travelled from distant breeding grounds in Scandinavia, or Siberia, places compared to which these windswept marshes are relatively hospitable winter habitat.

I wander on as a trio of chirping Meadow Pipits fly overhead, more seasonal refugees from the uplands. Stonechats are here too, bold, striking and confiding. Stonechats watch you as you watch them. They seem to keep an eye on the observer, and occasionally take off to snatch one of the few insects still active in late Autumn, from the air or off the ground.  As I neared the next hide I was aware of the sky filling with birds, Godwit, all the ducks, Lapwings, and smaller Starlings, so often seen in the company of Lapwings on South Essex marshes at this time of year, and previously hidden among the long grass, all taking to the air.   Presumably disturbed by all the commotion, a Grey Heron joined them too.  They wheeled and climbed, alarm calls echoing, staying airborne, indicating the presence of an aerial predator. I could not spot one.  In the photographs of the flock the roofs of passing vans on the A130 are visible, but I was not aware of them at the time. This was wild Canvey. I sat down in the hide, and as I did so the birds began to settle again, Wigeon landing on the water en masse in front of me, hundreds of them.  A circling Marsh Harrier seemed too distant to be the cause of their collective alarm. A couple of ducks took off from the other side of the water, and a shape raced toward me across the water. I couldn’t make it out at first but within a few seconds I was eye to yellow eye with a Sparrowhawk. We seemed to hold each others’ gaze for a second as the raptor climbed a little, effortlessly, giving a piping alarm call of its own, and passed over my head, and over the top of the screen, dropping in behind a hedgerow somewhere between where I sat and the Oil Refinery, and was gone from view. I have no regrets about lacking the presence of mind to point my camera at it, that would have deprived me of the eye-to-eye moments I had with the bird, and the breathless, heart racing moment.  I hadn’t recognised the bird at first because its outline was broken by the dead starling in the hawk’s talons. This was a stunning wild predator, in a stunning wild landscape.

Flocking Wigeon, with passing traffic.

Walking down the path, between the hedges, crossing the bridge over the reed beds where a few short weeks ago Natalie and I had been watching the swallows gather to roost before their flight to sub-Saharan Africa, now long gone, I could not help but wonder at this oasis, and the beautiful, underrated part of the country into which it fits, the Estuary England, the South Essex Marshes. Like so many South Essex wildlife sites, West Canvey does not exist separately from the urban and industrial places which surround it, but merges seamlessly with them to form a wider landscape, continuous and stunning and interwoven.  It is not far from Basildon, and is one of a suite of marshes the RSPB helps to look after locally. Here and in the wider area, from Fortress Purfleet, known to the RSPB as Rainham Marshes and sitting West of the Dartford Crossing, to the wintering flocks of Brent Geese and Turnstone which hang around at high tide at the foot of Southend Pier in the East, and Wallasea and Foulness Islands beyond, both noted for their wintering raptors, these sites are settle easily into a landscape shaped by human activity along the river. So many, such as the chalk habitats at Chafford Gorges near Thurrock, once a chalk quarry, or the new invertebrate reserve managed by BugLife at Canvey Wick, home to rare bees and other invertebrates, once an oil refinery, exist on Brownfield sites, shaped by industry, and these industries existed here because of the river, connecting London with the open sea.

Stonechat on Canvey Island

South Essex, I thought, as I became surrounded by the squeaking contact calls of busy long-tailed tits around me, you are bloody gorgeous and I love you. Then I thought, oh look, a Goldcrest.

Pitsea Creek.