Rainham RSPB

New Year’s Day



First of all – Happy New Year to everyone, I hope 2015 brings you good fortune.

As per recent years, New Years day has been reserved for Rainham and the start of the year list, after last year’s total of 138, the aim for 2015 will be to top this.

My highest year list total for Rainham is 160, a nice total set a good few years back when I had a bit more energy and tenacity.

To add a bit more spice to it this year, everyone will be doing their Rainham Year lists but we are now in teams of 3 or 4 persons, our team is made up of Paul, Dominic, Shaun and myself. It’s all a bit of fun but I have no doubt that it will become very competitive once up and running.
For myself today I put in about 5 hours starting in darkness trying to get a Woodcock dropping into the woodland, the weather it has to be said was not ideal, overcast and very windy for most of the day.

Never less I managed a good total of 74 after originally thinking I had 76, so still very pleased with that for a first day’s total.
Highlights were Barn Owl, 2 Marsh Harriers, Dark Bellied Brent Goose, 2 Grey Plovers, Chiffchaff, Raven and a Spotted Redshank.

The Woodcock never materialised unfortunately, despite being a Marsh with a decent bit of woodland there never easy here.

I also have at last traded in my old Nikon D80 and D300, 80,000 and 126,000 on the shutter counts respectively so I got my use out of them. On Wednesday I went to Grays of Westminster and exchanged them for a D7100 having read up on them quite a lot, far more modern, it was the obvious choice financially.

It didn’t even come out of the bag at Rainham but Friday is looking better, quite different from my old D300, the problem will come from remembering it all, the memory is not what it once was.