Birds Before Breakfast at Cranham Marsh

I see no need to blog in chronological order, so in between Holiday Blogs I'm going to post this, about a lovely morning joining a walk organised by my local Essex Wildlife Trust group.

Cranham Marsh is a small patch of land, managed for the benefit of wildlife by Essex Wildlife Trust, bounded by monocultures of oilseed rape and other crop plants, and the small conurbation of Upminster. In spring its ancient woodland, historic reedbeds, scrub and wet meadow rings to the sound of birdsong and the hum of bumblebees. It is a patch I do not blog about nearly enough, and wonderfully local. On the 5^th of May the site hosted its annual “Birds Before Breakfast” walk, led by its inimitable warden, local author and EWT conservation stalwart Tony Gunton, and my Mother and I were up early to attend. We somehow arrived between the two crowds who take the walk, and while the site seemed initially quiet for birds, the view across the wide fields of yellow brassicas toward the Church of All Saints was pleasing in the early morning light.

View of All Saint's Church, Cranham.

We eventually joined a group of about 20 people, curious local people and experienced birders, and walked onto the reserve. A few Swallows pursued insects over the hedge tops, against a blue sky.  My first UK Swifts of the year also wheeled about, and Orange Tip butterflies fluttered amongst the Red Campion flowers.  Common woodland birds, including Dunnock and Blackbird were singing loudly and conspicuously, and the distinct two note song of Chiffchaffs could also be heard, amongst the burgeoning trees.  Little charms of goldfinch fluttered through the hedge tops. Tony led us to a spot where we were able to watch a pair of whitethroats a little warbler and summer visitor from Subsaharan Africa, going back and forth feeding their young. Cranham Marsh seems to host large numbers of these charming little migrants, and their song, sometimes described as scratchy, and rather thinner perhaps than the song of some other warblers, is an evocative sound of the place.  Part of the reserve had been closed off as conservation grazing cattle worked their magic, controlling scrub and helping to restore the historic wet meadows. Mumsy heard a cuckoo, although neither of us could see it, its distinctive call is unmistakeable.  I saw a local cuckoo in Hornchurch country park later that day.

Blackcaps were also in evidence, another charming warbler species, also largely a summer visitor to the site.  Jackdaws periodically made squawking flights from some of the tall, ancient woodland trees which border the meadows, and they were joined by the bright, noisy and exotic Rose Ringed Parakeets which have joined the breeding bird list for the site in recent years.  While distinct in flight, their bright green plumage makes them very well camouflaged in their treetop habitat, as no doubt their ancestors in India were. More conspicuous in the treetops was a handsome Stock Dove, a smart and oft-overlooked pigeon, resembling a well-scrubbed, more minimalist looking woodpigeon, to which it is closely related. This one sat on the bough of an ancient oak, not far from a pair of parrots.

Part of Cranham Marsh LNR

 We were, for a donation, treated to a cooked breakfast of egg sandwiches, and, for the more carnist-inclined, egg and bacon sandwiches, prepared for us by the EWT local group’s volunteers.  People noted that attendance was down a little on previous years, which seemed a shame for what is so clearly a gem of an event, connecting people with the wildlife on their doorstep here on the outskirts of London. If you are in Upminster on the early May Bank Holiday, I heartily recommend birds before breakfast, it is well worth the early start.

Okay this wasn't taken at Cranham Marsh, but the other group's place down the road. Nevertheless, this is what it looked like.

As Mumsy and I were walking homeward, at what must still have only been about 10am, a small bird took off from the bridge, which crosses the stream, perhaps flushed by its approach. There was a flash of blue, and a distinctively shaped bird, with a stocky body and a long, sword-like beak, flew off across the meadow, presumably cutting out the streams meanders. Kingfishers breed locally at an RSPB reserve down near the river, and can even be seen in some urban parks, but this was a new one for me on my local patch, and what a bird, a stunner,  a Kingfisher!  I left with a healthy appreciation, renewed, of a local wildlife asset, and of the efforts of people like Tony Gunton and the other volunteers who do so much to preserve it and maximise its wildlife value.

A Tale of Two Owls

Gialova, Greece, Sometime in Early August 2011

I’m casting my mind back now to my first encounter with a wild Barn Owl. It was last year, and I was volunteering in Greece, enjoying the summer of my life.  It was July, or early August, and I was with three or four people, young volunteers like me, and we’d been cycling between point counts on our circuit of the Gialova Lagoon.  I’d met and photographed my first Kentish Plover, or “Alexandrinus,” pronounced with a Spanish accent,  as it was known among ourselves, and seen the little fluffy chicks wandering about on the cracked mud on their oversized feet. I remember Cleopatra’s Brimstone butterflies, and Scarce Swallowtails being almost everywhere, and the wide muddy lagoon, never blue like in the postcards, always with the sound of the ripples lapping on the shore. We made our way to a disused fish farm which stood beside the beach, and represented our last point count of the day. I’d already been informed that “Tyto,” as he was known in our quasi-scientific idiom, lived here, and Estela, the HOS Ornithologist, had shown me their wonderfully messy former nest site, in an apparently filthy room upstairs in the old fish farm, with owl pellets and droppings over the wall, and a filthy space in which the owls had raised their chicks a year or two before. But it had been a while since the owls had been seen, apparently, having been familiar to Estela in the months and years previously.  I was at the back of the crowd, scanning the rafters of the old fish farm, happy to have seen a little Athene noctua, which we all enjoyed, when a white shape appeared to drop from the rafters and fly across the hugely spacious room that would have been the main floor of the factory.  It paused on one of the crossbars which held up the roof and, in what was intended as a combination of a whisper and a shout, and futilely, I tried to call back my colleagues to see the owl. White, a little ghostly, utterly silent, and incredibly beautiful, the owl appeared to hear me and was off through a space in the wall.

A couple of days later, on a cool morning before the Mediterranean heat began to beat down, I returned to the old fish farm, a little against the advice of others who warned it could be dangerous. I should stress looking for owls in abandoned buildings in the small hours of the morning, and alone, is not something this blogger recommends. I sat down on a pile of rubble in the main body of the building and waited for “Tyto.” It was about six in the morning, the same time we carried out our bird monitoring at the lagoon. It will come as no surprise, that, any paranoia about homeless drug dealers chasing conservation volunteers out of the fish farm in the morning quickly abated, and I fell asleep.
I woke up what must have been about an hour later and already the sun was high and the air was beginning to get quite warm. I rose to my feet and looked about. “Tyto” was only a few metres away, and when he saw me move, he took to the wing in a second, but, perhaps curious about me, he alighted in the far corner of the room. I approached him a little, inching forward, and I raised my camera and extended my lens. In the dim light of the fish factory, I needed a steady hand, but I managed to take a single record shot before he moved off, his broad, white wings carrying him silently through his gap between wall and ceiling, and away out of sight.

Tyto alba, Gialova Lagoon, August 2011

4^th June 2012

I’d been trying to shake an inexplicable feeling of immense mild awkwardness and irritation all day. It was the evening, and I decided to throw my bike around Pages Wood, part of the Millennium Community woodlands project, operated by the Forestry Commission, and set between Upminster and Harold Wood, beside the busy Southend Arterial Road.  Young trees have been planted on former farmland, with a few old trees dominating as standards. The river Ingrebourne flows through it, lined with just such oak standards. As it reaches the side of the dual carriageway, a small network of hedges with a few standards spreads out, a bridge crosses the Ingrebourne and the path continues across meadows in which Horses are periodically grazed.  I rode laps of the track, I wasn’t birding, merely having a bit of a ride to blow out the cobwebs on a pleasant, sunny evening. I paused beside the river to watch the swallows picking off insects from the little living clouds which danced above it. I saw a couple of green woodpeckers, pecking about in the grass, the flowery meadows which line what will one day become, when the trees are more mature, the woodland rides, and I heard the Jackdaws alarm calling each time a dog passed them.

The light had begun to fade and I decided to cross the Ingrebourne and head back up the A127 to get home. As I did so, between the mature oak trees, I saw a white bird, very briefly, and I wondered what it was. The view was brief, it could even have been a white pigeon, but I moved forward a little to get a closer look. As the bird reappeared, its identity became clear. It had long, broad wings, was bigger than a pigeon, and its shape was unmistakeable. The flat faces of owls, honed by evolution to channel sound to their remarkable ears, give them a unique appearance in profile. It was a white lady, of medieval superstition, a barn owl, white and angelic against the fading light! I moved on a little, as the owl flew out of sight. I positioned myself on the path with a good vista of the dark green oaks and the buttercup infested meadow, and waited. I didn’t have to wait long. The owl reappeared, making another hunting pass low in front of the trees, eyes fixed on the ground, in search of the mice and voles on which they feed. She rounded a small Hawthorn on the meadow and, for a moment, was flying straight at me. She turned and I attempted to reel off a couple of shots with the DSLR, but as I raised it she saw me and turned tail, drifting silently over the trees and away to the East, where more woodland stood, before the trees gave way to urban parkland and sprawl. She was gone, and I had only blurry long shots on the camera, but she was beautiful, and my first British barn owl.  The experience was almost spiritual, the barn owl, a childhood favourite and ghostly beauty, floating over these woods and meadows on the cusp of London’s metropolis, something so wild, so beautiful, so revered and feared over the years for her unique colour and crepuscular habits. It was with a much less heavy heart that I made my way home in the fading light of a beautiful June evening, across the community woodland past the dog walkers, and the rubbish strewn bridge over the Arterial Road.

Barn Owl, Pages Wood, near Upminster, Essex, England, June 4th 2012

Wild flower Meadows at Pages Wood.

The Mature Trees into which she disappeared, Pages Wood.