Pipits at Rainham Marshes

8th December 2023

A few hours to spare so time for a visit to Rainham Marshes hopefully for some winter thrushes. The one thing about visiting Rainham is that you can always be assured of a warm welcome from the numerous House Sparrows, and they are also rather photogenic.

So now for a walk along the river wall to look for winter thrushes. Unfortunately lots had moved on but I was able to spend some time with the tame Rainham Kestrel which was most obliging.

Back on the reserve wildfowl were well represented with Teal, Shoveler and Shelduck.

It was also good to see numbers of Wigeon building up..................

.......................and I am sure that these days there are more Pintail than before. What absolutely cracking birds.

Waders were poorly represented with just some Lapwings and Snipe, although earlier I did see some Black-tailed Godwits and Curlew leaving the Purfleet Scrape for the ebbing tide. The Lapwings in particular were very active with much bathing and wing-flapping going on to dry off.

The Snipe on the other hand spent much of their time sleeping interrupted by some essential preening.

But the stars of the show today were the pipits. I first found two Rock Pipits on the foreshore in rather tricky side-light but eventually one moved to a more favourable posotion with the sun behind me.

And then I found a couple of Meadow Pipits by the ant hill which were uncustomarily tame and allowed a reasonably close approach. 

Just take a Meadow Pipit and add a dash of Rose Hips!!!

For my Xmas card this year I was looking for a Robin sitting on some Holly without success, so I will have to make do with a Meadow Pipit with some rose hips.

Merry Xmas Everyone !!!!!