Rainham Marshes

I arrived in the RSPB car park at 7.40am. Immediatley greated with the flight calls of two Ring Necked Parakeet I  set off down the river side of the Thames wall heading on my usual route. The wind was Westish and very strong. The clouds dark with rain and heading quickly in my direction.

A male Reed Bunting flew into the wind along side me heading in the same direction; it didnt look to be making much progress and dropped into the grass to my left. A steady stream of mixed gulls, Common, Herring, Lesser Black Backed & Great Black Backed all headed low up river towards the landfill. Black Headed Gulls sat about on the shoreline.

A group of 6 Rock Pipit messing in the seaweed and possibly a Water Pipit in the grass / mud edging, it looked clean but i couldnt get enough on it, a lot lighter than the Rock Pipits seen just before but too much wind noise to hear anything.

Numerous Teal, Mallard, Wigeon swam in the waters edge and Cormorant were busy diving in mid water.

By the time i got to Aveley Bay i was windswept, too much water in my eyes and now was getting rather wet from a steady drizzle. Aveley Bay didnt hold much, more of the same along with some Lapwing & Shelduck. No Black Tailed Godwit or Redshank to be seen. About 6 Pied Wagtail flew over into the reserve along with a Kestrel up by the small car park.

I headed back to the reserve and got there just as the draw bridge was being lowered, nothing different on the way back apart from Goldfinch, House Sparrow & Greenfinch on the feeders both in car park and reserve. Chaffinch and Collard Dove were also present.

Heading to the Purfleet Scrape hide to see the works being done it all looked good and seemed to be filling slowly. A large group of Greylag & Canada Geese were already making use of the recently scraped land.

No sign of the Bearded Tits and not much else until the Northern Boardwalk area where i ticked 2x Dunlin, Ruff, 3x Black Tailed Godwit & a single Golden Plover

A group of about 25 Stock Dove in the middle after the Barrets Hide along with 6 Skylark with a weak flight call being heard. The woodland area was busy but everything was low and i was running out of time so made a quick exit.

Other Birds Seen: Shoveller, Pintail, Coot, Little Grebe, Carrion Crow & not much else.