"They're twitterpated!"

Aaaah, the Owl in Bambi. How right he was.

With a morning and afternoon off work and the sun beating down upon London, I seized the opportunity yesterday to enjoy Rainham Marshes. It truly felt like Summer, and I was so happy to be outdoors enjoying it. Unfortunately Linda couldn't come with me but made perfectly clear that she will be attending next time!

From the second I stepped out of my car into the car park, I was bombarded with birdsong - namely Chiffchaffs. The usual birds were at the visitors' centre, with a few Teal, Wigeon, Mallard, and a Grey Heron on the small pools closer by. Round to the "bus-stop" screen where there was a non-stop, anxious, very familiar buzzing, whistling, twittering and chatting coming from one bird. It was none other than a beautiful Sedge Warbler, the first of the year! In Northern Africa mere days ago, now it graced Rainham's reedbeds in the brilliant sunshine. And a Stock Dove and small group of Shelduck flew overhead. I attempted to get some video but only had my phone with me and it was appalling, so no uploads today I'm afraid.

Continuing round, I saw several Chiffchaffs and then heard that (once again familiar) woodland song of a Blackcap. Waiting a minute or so yielded lovely views of the bird, a smart and restless male, another first for the year! Shortly afterwards, I found more males and a female feeding in the trees - to think I used to consider Blackcap a semi-rarity and saw one once a year at best. I suppose that just shows how much I was paying attention or cared.

Then just after the Blackcaps, I looked up for some unknown reason and a Swallow graced my binoculars! It was flying East-South-East which was weird. But I don't care - the Swallow marked my 100th bird seen in 2011 and I think it is a highly appropriate bird to do so. A pheasant promptly proceded to scare the crap out of me by calling what must have been 3 metres away from inside a thicket. You don't realise how loud they can be until they do that.

Further round, the Chiffchaffs were all "twitterpated"; they were chasing each other all over the place preventing me from seeing if any of them were Willow Warblers. I couldn't identify any of them as WWs and heard no song either so I have a bit more searching and waiting to produce what is supposedly the most common breeding bird in Britain.

Now for an amazing paragraph. I hit the boardwalk and decided to stand and wait for a few minutes, just to watch. Almost immediately, I heard and saw a Whitethroat fly down into a bush, stay for around 20 seconds, then fly off never to be seen again! Yet another migrant! Unfortunately I didn't see or hear it quite well or long enough to discount Lesser Whitethroat but I shall get plenty more opportunities in the future (and had been informed in the centre that there was supposed to be a Whitethroat in the area). Good enough for me. But then: "CHIU, CHIU-TII CHIU-TII CHIU-TII" (or whatever) exploded from a location mere feet away from me. 'A Cetti's Warbler!', I proclaimed in my head, pleased at the opportunity to hear the bird calling. Then the Cetti's Warbler hopped out, flew across the boardwalk, perched in a bush, sang, flew back to another bush, perched for a while longer, sang for even longer, and then disappeared singing at regular intervals. No doubts! No small flash of brown in the reeds that could have been a Wren if I'm honest. This was my first and probably best forever sighting of a Cetti's, and I am so enormously chuffed, that it almost beats the feeling I get from seeing all the migrants. Wow!

There wasn't a lot else around the reserve, with the waters exceedingly quiet, save for a large number of Shelduck, some Shoveler and Pochard hanging on with the three Lapwings. The Marsh Frogs, which I had never seen or heard before today, confused the hell out of me for a couple of hours until I worked out what they were, with their utterly bizarre laugh/scold/croak noise. And they were loud. And everywhere. However, there were more Sedge Warblers further round amongst the reeds, and a Reed Warbler to add on top, which gave me an excellent chance to listen to both birds and try to identify determiners to distinguish between them by song. I concluded that the Reed Warbler has a more Rhythmic, Regular, Ranged song, and the Sedge Warbler tends to insert Squeaks, Shrill notes in a very much more Superfluous manner. Pathetic I know, but it'll come in handy!

So this one trip brought my year list up by six ticks! Notably absent were Wheatear (for the site, not for the list), Willow Warbler and Yellow Wagtail, despite my awareness of their possible presence and concerted efforts to see them. There's still a lot of time until October/November though.

Oh, and: ONLY TEN DAYS UNTIL SUFFOLK!!!