High Tide roost count December 19th

As mentioned on Saturdays blog entry, today was roost count day, the idea being to record all roosting waders from West Thurrock Marshes to East India Dock Basin. By doing this a proper annual record can be kept of the species and numbers of wader for each winter period which come up the Inner Thames. So that we can get comparison figures to the counts below, I hope we can do another in the 2nd winter period.

Redshank coming into roost

 All who participated did a great job, especially in the snow and extreme cold, I know my feet went first, even with 3 pairs of socks on. As many may know, roost counts are just a matter of standing and waiting, in short, it was bloody freezing.

Grey Heron coming in

 Sites and participants

West Thurrock Marshes – Jonathan Lethbridge, Dave Bradnum and Nick Croft

Rainham RSPB – Steve Bacon

Stone Barges – Paul Hawkins and Shaun Harvey

Dagenham – myself

Barking – myself

Woolwich – Des McKenzie

East India Dock Basin – Nick Tanner and Gary James

Cormorant trying to get his Flattie back

Results from all the sites

Avocet – 59 possibly a record count for London

Bar Tailed Godwit – 1 very likely the bird that has been around for a few weeks now

Black Tailed Godwit – 588 a very high count, no doubt weather related

Common Sandpiper – 4 wintering

Common Snipe – 59 evenly spread amongst all the sites

Curlew – 39 main congregation West Thurrock

Dunlin – 1207 mainly West Thurrock

Golden Plover -1 a flyover at Rainham

Grey Plover – 12 very likely more around

Jack Snipe – 3 E.I.D.Basin and Rainham

Lapwing – 415 way down on normal numbers

Redshank – 888 way higher than I thought it would be

Black Tailed Godwit

One for Sarah, pair Teal, hope you like them

The Black Tailed Godwit and Redshank counts were exceptional, the high numbers are very likely down to the extreme weather with birds moving down from Canvey and Tilbury.

It all shows how important the Inner Thames are as a wintering area for feeding waders, already looking forward to a 2nd count in Feb.

Additional species

3 Redhead Smew were seen by many along the Thames, including myself as they roamed up and down the river. Also the boys at West Thurrock had 2 Scaup, hopefully more to come.

3 very distant Smew