Canvey Point and Two Tree Island

August 25th

With a not very nice forecast, rain showers for most of the morning I headed for the Point, the wind not ideal, a south westerly, I thought I was in with a chance of a goodie or 2 given the time of year. With a high tide of around 5.30a.m I arrived at 5.45am and firstly checked the Marina roost, this produced 6 Sandwich Terns, 42 Turnstone and a good mixture of Gulls although no Med’s.
Walking back along the inside of the sea wall produced 63 Ringed Plover and 26 Dunlin on a section of exposed mud, additionally there was a Common Sandpiper further up as I neared the Point.

I gave it till just after 7.00am at the Point and then decided to move on to Two Tree as the south westerly was getting progressively stronger and probably stopping anything out of the ordinary from coming in.
A couple of flocks of Dunlin and Ringed Plover were noted moving up river and a distant flock of Dunlin contained a slightly larger bird that looked very good for Curlew Sandpiper, unable to clinch it though as I just could not get good enough views in the bad light.Commic Terns were all moving up river and totalled 26.

Pressing on I headed for…..


Two Tree Island

I hurried out to the hide as the tide was still highish but dropping, I was hoping that they would be still be roosting on the scrape. On arrival though in the car park there were at least 50 Ringed Plover sitting in out on the causeway with the odd Dunlin and Turnstone mixed in with them.
Arriving out at the Scrape and all had either left earlier or did not roost there in the darkness, 23 Teal were present along with a handful of Lapwing, I then decided to go through the waders out on the Creek and on the Salting’s.
It was quite apparent that a raptor was around and it eventually materialised into a female Sparrowhawk flicking in and out of the little creeks, although not good news for Redshank and the like it did give me a chance to count the waders flocks which had bunched.
Black Tailed Godwit numbers were around 250 with Knot numbering about 180; best estimate for Redshank was about 200 although I suspect the totals for all were higher as I could see further wader movement up the Creek.

Everything eventually settled down and I found 14 Greenshank bunched up on a Salting’s spit, all were resting up out of the wind.
As the tide dropped I found 5 Bar Tailed Godwits as I scanned along with 2 Whimbrel and 16 Grey Plover feeding on the mud, the number of Curlew leaving the roost on the Salting’s easily exceeded 100 birds.
No Little Terns unfortunately at either here or at the Point earlier, next time hopefully.