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.

Falls of Clyde

On Thursday I was lucky enough, while North of the Border, to visit Scottish Wildlife Trust's reserve at Falls of Clyde. It sits beside the New Lanark UNESCO World Heritage Site, designated for its industrial history. Mills were established by Richard Arkwright in the 18th century beside the river Clyde's only waterfalls. Arkwright was certainly not noted for his philanthropy, but his successor at New Lanark, Richard Owen, a reformer and philanthropist turned the mills and the town into something of a social experiment and example of Utopian Socialism, a philosophy which he helped to found. Today the only industry there is a hydroelectric power station.

Today the site is largely a tourist attraction, and reached by a steep set of steps from the public car park, which sits between the village and the car park. Here several crows were mobbing a Buzzard, the only raptor I saw that day. Falls of Clyde is famous for its Peregrines, which are best seen in summer when they are nesting.  I passed among the stone mill buildings to the River Clyde.

In the shallow water where the river is relatively wide through the village of New Lanark itself, a Dipper was bobbing about on a moss covered rock. Throughout the wooded valley could be heard the roar of the waterfalls, ever present, continuous. The Corra Linn falls are the largest on the Clyde, and the riverside path offered views of the falling, churning white water.

Corra Linn on the Falls of Clyde.

The woodland which fringed the river seemed to be mixed in composition, featuring birch, oak and pine trees. When the open country outside the deep gorge could be seen from the path, snow capped peaks looked in the far distance. The woods echoed with passerine contact calls but they seemed reluctant to be seen, although ubiquitous friendly robins, and early singing great tits were seen, as well as a wren, busy in the undergrowth. On the river itself a single female and three smart male Goosander were about, the males resting on the bank yards from the cascading water.

A beautiful place.

Arctic Waders and Icicles at Heysham Head.

If our proximity to the sea has denied me the pleasure of walking in the snow here in Lancaster, I thought, after throwing my Wildlife Monitoring Techniques “The Bird Survey” and “The Insect Survey” into the drop box at the University, the culmination of months of fairly to moderately hard work and procrastination, I may as well go for a walk  by the sea. 

Song Thrush at Heysham.

I drove to the prettier end of Heysham, the Port Town  Morecambe, and parked up outside the Half Moon Beach Cafe, the one with the disconcerting flags, and stood where the road turns to approach the port, and the two imposing structures which are the two nuclear power stations. Heysham itself remains in the running for a third, but it would, it seems, take a lot of destruction to squeeze in such a building on this site, where archaeological remains, caravan sites, an active port and huge flocks of wading birds are already pressed together.   I do not know which other Northern sites are in the running for the dubious honour, and nuclear seems like a grubby compromise, with the emphasis on the grubby, for the future of energy, but Heysham doesn’t need it.

View of Heysham Power Stations.

A song thrush hopped about and posed for a couple of photos on the bank near the fence, and a cluster of Knot huddled together against the biting cold.  The grey winter plumage of the Knot, Red Knot in acknowledgement of their rust coloured breeding plumage, and their hunched posture against the wind, just seems fitting on such an icy day. Appropriately too, these birds breed in the arctic. Even their scientific name, Caladris canutus, invoking the Norse king Knut, speaks of wintry coastlines and the power of the tide which governs their lives. .  The breeze was not strong  but it was bitter. Smaller Turnstones had a different strategy, busily gathering food, picking about among the pebbles. A flock of finches flew in from over the two imposing cuboid power stations. I got breifly excited, scanning their number for some of the elusive passerines, Snow Buntings and Twite, which sometimes use this coast when the cold weather forces them off their more normal, upland habitats. They can deal with the rocky substrate. The birds turned out to be greenfinches, and they foraged in the bushes. I walked down the beach. The water flowing out of the red soil had formed large icicles, like vitreous stalactites,  which hung from the subtle overhangs of the eroding sections at the top of the beach, as if just to underline the fact it was cold.

Icicles.

A flock of noisy, piping little birds flew in low over the waves.   My binoculars revealed them to be Ringed Plovers, with bold black masks on their faces and dark collards. These smart, and inevitably cute little birds looked hardly resilient to the cold, but they joined the foraging turnstones in frenetic activity on the beach. I walked up onto Heysham Head, the green promontory of land with National Trust signs on it. Wrens hissed angrily in the bushes, there were several of these feisty little birds of the scrub around.  How tiny bodied birds cope with the ice is a constant source of wonder, but they do.

I kept my eye on the rocks below. A couple of curlews sat with their heads and long beaks under their wings, with turnstones at their feet, and a ringed plover wandering about. One looked up, irritated by the small birds, and eventually took off over the waves. I scanned the surface of the sea, hoping for some interesting sea birds seeking the shelter of Morecambe bay, or better still a dark dorsal fin rising out of the water. I saw no fin, but a little crowd of Oystercatchers, black with white bands on their wings, which flew around the headland and settled somewhere out of sight.  Distant gulls were Common Gulls, far from the commonest of gulls, but winter visitors to most of England and largely breeding birds of further North than this, marked out by the big white mirrors in their black-tipped primaries.  A brown bird over the water turned out to be one of the sleepy curlews, perhaps irritated into flight by busy Turnstones.

Wakey Wakey!
Note the Ringed Plover at the bottom left. I knew he was there when I took the photo. Honest!

I walked up to the top, close to the chapel of St Patrick, a ruin which stands on the top of Heysham head, overlooking the town of Morecambe and its promenade, with its mysterious open stone graves, hewn into the rock, presumably the reason the head has been spared from industry and providing the interest of the National Trust.  By now the cold which numbed my fingers was creeping up my arms and I thought perhaps it was time to turn around. A dog, out for a walk with a few canine comrades and their master, put up a couple of Lapwings. I descended a little and saw the Oystercatchers on the rocks below me.  There must have been a couple of hundred, and they looked settled for the night, although more birds were flying in to join them. A duck caught my eye and closer inspection revealed it to be a fish-eating merganser type. She was a female with a brown head and grey flanks splashed with white. The brown of her head and grey of her body seemed to fade into each other, and the white patch beneath her beak was edged diffusely with brown feathers. The crest was thin, and looked like a Mohawk. I managed to take a couple of photos, blurry, distant record shots in the fading light, so I stand to be corrected, but I wrote down Red-Breasted Merganser, less common round here than the very similar, and currently range-expanding Goosander.  It dived frequently, as did the few cormorants which also sat on top of the waves.

Female Red Breasted Merganser

As I walked down the path toward the car park, joined by increasing numbers of dogs and dog walkers, signalling the end of the working day, I made my way back down the head toward the car park, and the welcome opportunity to warm up after a day by the coast.  Twite and Snow bunting less, but nonetheless having enjoyed the opportunity to do a bit of coastal birding and  newfound, and temporary freedom from impending essay deadlines.

Oystercatchers

Bird List for Heysham head, 18^th January 2012: (International Common names/Authors preference)

Song Thrush (Turdus philomelos) Red Knot (Caladris canutus) Turnstone (Arenaria interpres) Common Redshank (Tringa totanus) Greenfinch (Carduelis chloris) Northern Lapwing (Vanellus vanellus) Greater Cormorant (Phalacrocorax carbo) Oystercatcher (Haematopus haematopus) Common Gull (Larus canus) Herring Gull (Larus argentatus) Black Headed Gull (Croicocephalus ridibundus) Wren (Troglodytes troglodytes) Carrion Crow (Corvus corone) Ringed Plover (Charadrius hiaticula) Red Breasted Merganser (Mergus serrator) Blackbird (Turdus merula)