Small finches always fly away

Good haul at Rainham Marshes yesterday (Wednesday) with a total of exactly 50 bird species recorded during the 9:30-14:00 stint (no pun intended, UNFORTUNATELY).

I won't bore you with the usual suspects, partly because it'd get dull and that's what my spreadsheet is for, but also because it's rather late and I want to go to bed. There was a large flock of canada geese feeding nearby some greylag geese, another sizeable flock (or gaggle!) in the main field. Something that looked very much like an oystercatcher flew right past my face but so quickly I couldn't bring myself to write its name on my notepad. I was very pleased that I identified a small party of 10-12 fieldfares flying over.

And that's basically my gripe today. Flyovers.

Everyone seems to be able to tell that that tiny black speck that I can't even see, making that generic 'jyupp' noise as it zooms directly into the sun, is in fact a 1st-winter female Lapland Bunting. I can identify two different flyover finches/buntings. One is a Goldfinch that makes the most obvious sound in the world, and the other is a Chaffinch, which I am led to believe sounds very much like all the other finches. But I haven't heard the others so a pox upon them. Anyway, my aim is to get better at this so I can really impress people as I go about my everyday life and casually point out the migrating Redpoll flying over. I use the word 'impress' relatively loosely.

On with the sightings! A lovely song thrush showed itself, along with a few skittish redwings, and a cetti's warbler called briefly near the car park. A green woodpecker was the first I'd seen at Rainham, and there were countless reed buntings and stonechats as I've come to get used to. After the first hide (whose name eludes me) I heard something very familiar and saw something quite small shoot past and away - a short glance with the binoculars before it disappeared out of sight showed that this was in fact a kingfisher! My first for London and Rainham, and a beautiful sight nonetheless. Chuffed, I continued to the shooting range hide where I noted hundreds of lapwing amidst tens and tens of golden plover, 2 curlew flew over - another first for Rainham/London, and I identified a greater black-backed gull. The pintail drakes were in the same place as usual, with some gadwall nearby, and a common gull flew lazily past.

I then spent another 30 minutes identifying linnets from about 200 feet with a pair of binoculars. Not much fun, but satisfying when I got the identification (and tried memorising their calls). I also spent a while identifying a little group of around 6 black-tailed godwits, which I decided were not bar-tailed godwits. How did I tell? Their tails were black. No really! I also caught sight of a snipe and spent another 20 minutes trying to tell if it was a jack snipe or not from such a distance. I'm happy it was a common snipe. A little egret made a brief appearance, as did a kestrel, and it was time to head back.

As I walked back to the car park (alas no pinging or cetti-ing) I watched the skies, and had no idea what most small things were. But then I caught sight of a strange gull, binoculared it, and it was a sole avocet flying over towards the river! Lovely end to the day!

So, to bed, so I can consolidate my knowledge of little brown finches flying away making truly un-unique sounds...