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.

The Hala Starling Experience

The last few evenings, on the way home from uni, assuming I’ve coincided my arrival with the fading light, I have had the honour of what I can only describe as the Hala Green Starling Experience.  Hundreds, or thousands, of the birds have taken to roosting in the bushes which separate our gardens from those of the houses which back on to us, and, morning and evening, their flocks arrive and depart. When I was a kid I clearly remember walking with my dad and watching murmurations of starlings blackening the sky in Romford. The birds would roost in the trees which grew out of the roundabout, the junction of underpasses outside the library.  This must have been the late 1980s or very early 1990s, and birds change their distributions, and now, as far as I’m aware, spectacular murmurations in Metropolitan Essex are pretty much unknown. The Starling has declined in numbers by something like 70% since then, and murmurations do not happen over metropolitan Essex any more. 

Over suburban Lancaster, however, the situation seems to be rather different. There have been some huge flocks these past few days, I cannot hazard a guess as to how many birds were involved, but it must have been in the thousands, cloud-like flocks twisting and changing shape, the birds moving in close formation, coming in through the darkening sky, making several passes of the roosting bushes, a few individuals dropping out and perching there. A sparrowhawk at one point landed on one of the bushes into which they’d been flying and put some of the starlings up. Those deeper in the branches, presumably feeling protected by their enclosed position. The hawk went after those in flight, which swiftly joined the murmuration.  It went in for an attack and the birds avoided it, in a coordinated formation, a burst of speed moving like a wave through the flock. The predator seemed to manage to grab one, and was off pretty quickly.

Despite the paintwork on my car appearing to pay the price of these spectacular murmurations, it feels like something of an honour to watch such a wildlife spectacle over my home of an evening.  They continue chattering in their roost sites well into the night, especially if disturbed. Starlings generally behave like this only in winter, and the flock may have included birds which bred over a wide area, perhaps many of them breeding beyond these shores. Their murmurations are unpredictable, they may use one site for several nights in a row, and then, perhaps in response to weather or feeding conditions, they are not seen there for some time. Certainly, come the spring they will disperse again to their breeding habitats, and will perhaps disperse or move elsewhere long before that, but for the past few days the Hala Green Starling Experience has been a wonderful, and nostalgic, suburban wildlife spectacle!

Species Involved: European Starling (Sturnus vulgaris) Eurasian Sparrowhawk (Accipiter nisus)

Heaton Park, Manchester

I need to conclude the Manchester account before I end up with a massive backlog of trips to write up. I went to Heybridge Basin yesterday and Cranham Marsh today.  I’m going to keep it brief but I felt that Heaton Park, Greater Manchester, which I visited with Tom, is a remarkable enough green space to be worth a write up. It belongs to a generation of grand, landscaped parks, from the 19^th century and calls to mind the Royal Parks of London, which it exceeds in size. It stands Heaton Hall, an old stately home used to accommodate aircrew on flying training during World War II, until recently open to the public, and now, unfortunately, unoccupied and looking worryingly forlorn.

Heaton House.

Reaching the park we decided to head up to something called the “animal zone” or some such, which turned out to be a collection of grubby farm animals in small enclosures. The highlight was watching the swallows flying in and out from under the eaves, busily attending their chicks, before rocketing out and into the sky in search of insects. Outside the run down looking stately home they alighted on the ground in pursuit of something we could not see. There were a couple of pied wagtails running about as well. 

Swallow at Heaton Park.

The park is a patchwork of long, rough grass, manicured lawn and copses. In the copses the green leaves of Himalayan balsam are in evidence, suggesting this invasive has a hold here, beside the stinging nettles and other flora. Whitethroats could be heard singing but few birds presented themselves among the leaves, those that did turned out to be blue tits. There were plenty of Rhododendrons, presumably planted there for their dramatic flowers, and they indeed looked spectacular. There were dog roses around as well. The woodland, clearly planted, had obviously matured, and spots around the sites main lake, where the Rhododendron lined gaps in the tree cover from which the pavilion could be seen across the water, was testimony to the skill and foresight of the landscapers.

View from the "Temple."

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On the lake we saw a crèche of Canada geese and goslings, and the waterfowl were dominated by Canadas and a number of feral, farmyard type Geese.  Feral Ducks mingled with wild Mallards and tufties. Some of the male mallards appeared to be losing their bright, breeding plumage, and their brown eclipse plumage, providing vital camouflage during the late summer/early autumn moult, was beginning to show through, as brown patches against the smart iridescent green of their heads and the grey of their flanks. A moorhen was feeding a fluffy chuck, and then, somewhat inexplicably, decided to chase it off. There were a few coots on the water, as well as a distant little grebe.

Moorhen and juvenile

Juvenile Coots.

We walked back up to the stately home and to the “temple” an observatory-like structure which may well have been used as such. From this, the highest point, according to interpretive signage, in Greater Manchester, much of the city was screened by woodland, but in front of us the Beetham Tower still loomed, an ever present sense of place.  We elected to try to and have a look at Heaton Reservoir, which appeared on our maps of the park, but we could not get there. Skirting round a barbed wire compound with communication aerials inside, we found ourselves in a patch of meadow which again hosted common spotted orchids.  Mistle Thrushes hopped about among the grass.  We wandered off through the woods until we came to the margins of a rough grassy area, grazed by a number of horses of various sizes and shades. A very handsome Sparrowhawk over our heads was a welcome addition to the Manchester bird list. 

Mallard moulting into Eclipse plumage.

At the tram station on the way home a juvenile blackbird posed for photos, before the tram made its way back among the red brick and new builds of Manchester. The city had offered an unexpected number of birding opportunities, we saw four species of Raptor including the Sparrowhawk here at Heaton Park, and the Peregrines blew us away. So keep your eyes out, if you find yourself up North, wildlife experiences can turn up quite unexpectedly!

Juvenile Blackbird at Heaton Park Station.