Diving into london

With the weather not been great on recently weekends a dry saturday morning tempted me to Fairlop Water in northeast london as there was a Great Northern Diver around as it was bird I only seen distantly before. Took a while to find but did see a few Goldcrest and Bullfinch around the edges and Pochard and Shoveler not bad for a saturday morning in a London Park. After a while managed to locate it out in the water before it disappeared for about 15 minutes when suddenly it reappeared and swam right past me which was a bit of a surprise. It then spent a bit of time fishing around the boats but like the names suggests it can dive for a long time so you never knew where it would reappear.

Great Northern Diver

Then headed to Rainham Marshes by which point it had got very windy so most of the small birds were keeping their heads down but around the feeders best number of Collared Doves with at least 30 in this 1 spot. On the marshes  good numbers of Teal and Wigeon were around with a few Shelduck and flying over Snipe but the highlight of the afternoon was watching the Marsh Harriers hunting with 4 birds showing very well.

Winter thrushes at the lodge

Planned to go up to the lodge to have a look at their binoculars so was lucky that for once some sunshine was forcast for early in the morning so when up early to see what was about but did't get very far as around the car park lots of winter thrushes were feeding on the yew tree in the car park. Mainly feeding were flocks of Redwings which seem to fly in quite regularly often feeding in the middle of the bush but every now and then came to feed on the yew berries out in the open.

Redwing in the yew tree

 Also with the flocks of Fieldfare was heard along with a few Blackbirds and a lone Mistle Thrush. Smaller birds feeding around near the feeder and yew trees were Coal Tits, Blue Tits, Great Tits, Chaffinches and calling Nuthatches.

Female Blackbird feeding

Perched Mistle Thrush

Then when for a walk around the main reserve where there lots of Coal Tits around espically around the Meadow Hide along with four Mallards on the pond. On the heath heard Great-spotted and Green Woodpecker and near the new toad ponds had a nice flock of Long-tailed Tits which contained a number of Goldcrest and a lone Treecreeper as well as a number of Blue and Great Tits.