15th
January One wheel on my wagon but I’m
still rolling along New Christy Minstrels
Out again and speedily down
the hill, I saw two foxes in fields on the way down and a couple of Jays
coincidentally. I eventually found Vange Marsh RSPB Reserve after being
given the wrong directions and having once again gone down a wrong route. An
old couple stopped me because of the large RSPB sticker on the back of my
fluorescent high visibility jacket. They wanted to tell me about a Red Kite
they had seen in Wales weeks previous and they did so at some length! No
problem, it is always a pleasure to have people share their nature stories with
such glee.
I was met at the reserve by Glenn and Alan Shearman at the excellent
RSPB centre there and photos for the press were taken. I had last been here
around 20 years to see an Olive-backed Pipit with those young twitching lads,
Richard, Jason - Olly and Alex - Bear. After a coffee and chat and more
photographs, I was off by myself to Vange Marsh itself.
It was difficult to find with no signposts and just a few scribbled
notes from Glenn’s instructions. One had to follow the concrete road back to
the level crossing, immediately over that turn left and go through a muddy
factory unit’s yard. Then go along an icy, dirty, pot-holed road, under the
noisy underpass of the main A13, turn left, go over a railway line, turn right
and find the notice board. Phew!
The miracle was that I actually found it!
A super marsh too with very wild duck; Wigeon and Teal, with numbers
into the hundreds but also Shovelor, a lovely male Stonechat, a couple of
Cetti’s Warblers and a Water Rail. Around twenty Fieldfare and Redwing were in
the hawthorns, as was a flock of eleven Long-tailed Tits. I explored every path
after leaving the bike locked to a fence behind small but all concealing
bushes. One path ended with large five bar gates barring the way but after
climbing over them I found a way down to a large dyke. I did not cross that but
instead walked to the far end of the reserve where a long sea wall gave views
over the whole of the marsh. Here Meadow Pipits were feeding and a number of Greylag
flew off towards some distant fields.
Time was getting on so it
was back to the centre to say thanks and goodbye. I watched the area by the
centre’s feeding station where there were not only the expected birds; titmice,
Chaffinch, Robin, House Sparrows and Dunnocks but there were also four Brown
Rats looking very plump, with their fluffed up fur protecting them from the
cold. Or maybe it was the large amount of fallen birdseed that they were
consuming that made them look so large. Now I do enjoy watching rats and these
four were entertaining, as their antics included chasing each other around the
feeders. I know they are not everyone's cup of tea but sorry, I like them.
The scene made me think of my dear Mother. No, not the UB40 song involving a kitchen! Mum, on seeing the rats, would have had a fit if she had been there. Mum has a phobia about both rats and mice; something to do with the hairless tail. Hamsters are fine! As a nine year old I played a cruel trick on her using a large piece of window putty nicked from a building site not far away; a building site that ruined my favourite play area, the site of a derelict stately home grounds with very overgrown gardens and masses of fabulous, deserted fruit trees. Oddly ironic that the housing estate it was to become has every road named after finches! Anyway I moulded the putty into a mouse shape and went up to Mum in the back kitchen claiming that I was holding a dead mouse that I had found in the back garden. Did she want to look? I can still remember how agilely she climbed on top of, what seemed to me back then, quite a high stool and screamed. What I cannot remember is whether I was punished for so terrible a trick. Probably.
From the centre I cycled
around to West Canvey Marsh and Bowers Marsh RSPB reserves via a
long descending main road high above the expansive fields. A bridge over a
tidal river had a Little Egret [90]
feeding along its edges, another year tick. In fact, this was the only year
tick of the day. Never mind, I enjoyed watching the four foxes out on the marsh
and searching through the large numbers of gulls here, mostly Herring Gulls.
Bowers Marsh RSPB Reserve - Google Maps
Bowers Marsh RSPB Reserve - Ebird webpage
I turned back after
photographing the bike against a large gate as evidence for having been there
but the bike seemed sluggish as I climbed the long hill. A puncture! My first
puncture of the trip and the back brake was knackered too. I struggled yet
managed to repair the latter but I had to push the bike back to Orsett. No
puncture repair kit on me. I had stupidly left it with all the panniers at the
bed and breakfast. One wheel on my wagon and I’m still strolling along.
A large Tesco’s a couple of miles later were able to help me out with a
can of car tyre foam with £2.00 off the price. Into my punctured cycle tyre
went the foam and with a rock-hard front tyre I soon reached the B & B.
It had been an enjoyable day cycling around
an area that I had really never been to before. Well, except for a targeted
trip many years ago to see a Sibe, the Olive-backed Pipit.
Now the name of that bird brings back memories of an amazing day's
birding back in the 1980s. It was the first time Richard, Jason and Alex had
been birding with me and it had started with a warning from my then wife, Jane.
As I got out of bed at around 3:00 a.m. she pronounced that something bad was
going to happen and that I should not go. Ignoring the portent of doom from my
sleepy princess, I picked up the excited lads at 4:00 a.m. from outside a pub
in Wolverhampton. On the national news days previously, there was a report of an
extremely rare bird found in the back garden of a birder; an Olive-backed Pipit
no less and hundreds of people had queued up to take their turn at going into
the birder’s lounge to view the bird.
We four arrived at the house in Huckleberry Close, Bracknell, to find
around twenty birders gathered there and a note on the door requesting that we
give them a rest and go around the back of the house. There we would find a
school field that allowed one views over the same gardens. We all did so and
were all soon ticking off a superb smart-looking pipit. Pipits are usually
little brown jobs – LBJs, Little Brown Jobs, which are not that inspiring to
look at except in spring when they perform a variety of song flights according
to species; a parachuting Tree Pipit, a ski slope falling Meadow Pipit. You get
the idea.
Here was a pipit worthy of a real good look. At first it sat on a branch
of a nearby pine tree but it soon flew down to the short grass in the gardens.
The same size as a Meadow Pipit but more heavily marked, darker streaks on the
breast and that colour on its mantle, olive.
What a great start to the lads twitching life! Olive-backed Pipit UTB, Under
the Belt. Where to next? Well, a male Ferruginous Duck regularly been seen for
days on lakes near to the Packet Boat House Inn near to Uxbridge. We soon got
there and found the lane down to an area of gravel pit lakes but which one had
the bird? We searched for a couple of hours finding the area a mass of scrubby
bushes with bomb like craters everywhere. Here Londoners had been digging in
search of Victorian bottles. It turned out that the area had been a rubbish tip
back in those far off days and bottle digs were all the rage back then in the
1980s. I had collected them myself years before, digging down into an old
rubbish tip near to my home in Redditch, Worcestershire.
Anyway, a fruitless search of the area's lakes had the lads and I waning
but not too downhearted. A dip, a missed bird but no problem, it was off to the
nearby Wraysbury Reservoir where three Smew
had been reported. Now in those far off days before pagers, before the
internet and the like, bird information was via the grapevine. Older readers
will remember the ritual of phoning birding friends and saying those immortal
words, “anything about?” and then jotting down as fast as you could the details
of the better birds so that one could decide where the best chances of a lifer
were. Maybe it was because the pipit had been the main bird and Smew was not a
lifer for me but my notes from the previous night’s phone call to John Holian
stated that the smashing little ducks were on Wraysbury Reservoir and it was
there that we arrived. Jauntily we waved to the workers painting the large
metal gates as we drove past them and circumnavigated the reservoir oblivious
to the fact that the rare birds were actually on a gravel pit nearby and not on
this particular reservoir. We were still oblivious to this fact when, after an
hour of circumnavigating this massive expanse of mostly bird free water, we
arrived back at the newly painted large metal gates to find that the workers
gone and the gates locked!
Four hours of watching all the aeroplanes taking off from Heathrow later
we were free but not until we had been approached by the local constabulary.
They had received a phone call saying that a group of shifty looking teenagers
with an older gent were trying to steal the gates. We were trying to lift them
off their hinges so that we could get out when the police had arrived! After
laughing at our predicament, the boys in blue had said that they would arrange
for someone with a key to release us. Well they did but it was still over an
hour later before an old man on a rusty bike cycled up to us and let us out. We
never did see the Smew that day as with our tails between our legs we headed
back to the Midlands. So, a lifer and two dips on the lads first ever day
twitching. What an eventful, unforgettable day! Getting home that evening my second
wife, Jane on hearing about our adventures, could only say, “I told you so.”
39.35 miles 1362 feet elevation up and down
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