Thank you, Hawk

Fair warning:  a bit of gore ahead.  

Last weekend was a bank holiday, meaning in the EU and UK we got a 4 day weekend to encompass Good Friday and Easter Monday.  My standard response "every Friday is a good Friday" never flies.  Just like this pigeon!  

We took the opportunity of the free days to head out for a walk along the Jurassic Coast, a stretch of dramatic red sandstone and limestone cliffs in East Devon and Dorset.  The train dropped us off in the seaside town of Exmouth and we were making our way to our lodging for the night when I noticed total pandemonium break out with the roosting gulls and pigeons.  For good reason: this handsome sparrow hawk had just made a kill right before us.

My camera had been in my pack, so it took me a few minutes to pull it out and get set up, but at this point, the hawk was plucking feathers on a still-struggling bird.

The hawk would pause and look around from time to time, the pigeon would take the opportunity and hop about a bit and the hawk would act like it's no big deal to be surfing a pigeon.

I don't think the sparrowhawk meant to bring it down in the middle of an intersection, so  I directed traffic around the scene and the few cars that came by seemed pretty keen to rubberneck the bloody drama playing out on the village streets.  A few bystanders took photos and explained to their kids what was going on.

 Yes, it was brutal to witness.  However, I am a hater of pigeons (they are currently busy shitting on my drying laundry and picnic table out on the balcony) and I always root for the hawk in this situation.

 Finally, the pigeon ceased to struggle, and the hawk went to work ripping out the feathers with glee.

 

 Bry kept uttering "ew...ugh, ew" with each rip, and a local recording it on his iphone said, "Brilliant!".  Which is my favorite word to describe this entire scene.  

The hawk didn't seem to mind the small crowd that had gathered to watch, but eventually he either got tired of being so exposed or the paparazzi just got to him, and with a huge effort, he took his dinner in the talons and flew off awkwardly to a nearby tree.

It looked like a pillowfight had gone down in the street.

I felt really fortunate to witness this- I've always been a fan of raptors and this is the first time I saw one take down prey up close.  When I got back to London, I noticed an eviscerated pigeon and a load of feathers blowing around on the rooftop below my flat, so I know there is something in the neighborhood that is hungry.  I just wish he would eat more.  

Wetlands

I had been wanting to get out to the London Wetland Centre since I had heard about it.  This sprawling marshland was very close to central London- you can take the Piccadilly line and walk across the Thames to get there.  That's pretty amazing.  Not too many cities have the kind of foresight to decide not to drain a swamp, let alone create one where there had once been a reservoir.

I waited until I had a nice sunny day and headed out with my giant telephoto lens.  Autumn is a great time to birdwatch here in England as all the birds who had spent the summer at points north are on their way to Africa then, and there are other winter visitors that start trickling in.

One thing I didn't realize about the Wetland centre is that it was set up as a bit of a zoo.  They had a big cafe and visitors centre, and they accommodate school groups regularly.  They had a lot of birds from all over in open-air enclosures with their wings clipped, with the common theme of "these are all birds that depend on wetlands all over the world".  I don't know how I feel about that, and they have come under fire from the public and from naturalist about this practice.  I guess they figured the general public wouldn't be satisfied paying admission for sitting in a blind hoping to see something other than seagulls and mallards.

Still, it afforded the ability to get good close-up shots of birds that normally would be a far-off smudge on the screen.  This was fine by me as some of the birds were just fantastically beautiful.

Tundra Swan

Bufflehead Duck

White-headed duck

Eider

Pintails

After a jaunt around the zoo, I made my way to the marsh, where they had blinds set up all around, and a tall fence as well.  You were invisible to the wildlife, and if there weren't too many screaming kids around, you could see quite a lot.   Tons of ducks and gulls, lapwings, lots of herons, a handful of divers.  It was bountiful, and some of the blinds had telescopes and binoculars, which were really handy. 

Red-breasted Merganser

Grey Heron

It took me most of the afternoon to walk around the marsh, stopping at each blind for a vantage point, studying what was there.  Hoping for a sighting of a shorebird or a peregrine falcon, but no luck there.  A falcon supposedly lives on the roof of Charing Cross hospital right across the Thames, and swoops on over from time time time when he is sick of dining on pigeon.

  

Jackdaws

Parts of the trail they had planted with local meadows, with beautiful wildflowers and the songbirds and butterflies they attract.

It seemed very remote, but at some points, you look across the marsh and ah, it is indeed London.

Shags

Gadwalls, with their black bottoms

Great crested grebe

My favorite sightings were those of the Shoveler ducks, with their comically oversized beaks.  They flock to the Thames in huge numbers in winter.  

I also so quite a few Teals with their painted hussy faces.

All this kissing-close to Central London.

I also saw a water vole, nimbly climbing up a bird feeder cage while his cousin the Norway Brown could only watch.  I got a glimpse of one last summer at Rainham Marsh- they are acrobatic little climbers that shimmy up and down reed stalks in the marshland.

Worth a trip out?  I guess...I was happy with my sightings and the ease of access from the city.  Having the zoo there kind of put a damper on things, and if I did it again I would probably find an RSBP site to give my money to instead.  Some online research showed much outrage not only about the clipped wings of their birds, but they also had allegedly gotten in the habit of shooting mallards that had gotten into the exhibit enclosures.  I hope that they were at the very least enjoying some roast duck if they were going to be shooting the wildlife they were claiming to protect.  

Rainham

I've been trying hard to see as much of London and England as possible.  I am just a visitor here after all, and every day there is a new urgency to see anything and everything.  I'm probably not taking a transatlantic flight just to see a marsh in the future.  

One sunny and hot afternoon, I headed out to Essex to Rainham Marshes.  

It's right on the ever-widening Thames in Rainham, about a half hour outside of central London.

Here, the RSBP maintains what used to be a military training site turned bird sanctuary.

There are almost three miles of elevated boardwalk trails that meander around the marsh.  The numerous duck blinds were closed while I was there, but there are several places to get views of the ponds (which are actually craters where the military had bombed).

It was really amazing how diverse this place was.  Despite being close to a highway, a high speed train line, elevated powerlines buzzing overhead, power plants and wind farms all around, it was surprisingly wild once you got in there.

There were tons of wildflowers, butterflies, dragonflies.

And just so many birds, many of them exclusive to reed and marsh habitats.  Which, like all bird habitats, is fast disappearing.

Goldfinch

Reed Warbler

Oh~  sorry about it so out of focus, but I totally saw a water vole.  They shimmy up the reed stocks and flit around nervously.  The entire time I was walking on the boardwalk over and through the reeds, I heard so many things scurrying around in the canes.  It was almost creepy.

I couldn't get to the bird blinds so I had very limited views of the marsh, but even the glimpse I could see was pretty rich.  Herons and egrets, ducks, coots and moorhens, lapwings, gulls, pipers and stilts.

I walked the 3 mile loop so slowly, I ended up getting locked in.  There were subway-stile turnstiles on the Thamesside edge, so I could get out eventually.  Hilariously, they have a drawbridge at the visitors center that they pull up at night, so you can't just hop the fence to get out.  

No one chased me out, so I enjoyed an empty marsh and watched as all the birds came down in the late afternoon.  The air was perfectly alive with bird songs; ones I had never heard before.  I don't know if anyone would have said this about this site when the military owned it, but it was enchanting.

Sedge Warblers

My one bird of prey sighting: a Marsh Harrier.  It was enormous, and every time it swooped around the marsh, all the other birds cackled in alarm.  Birds of prey are really easy to spot since any bird wanting to stay alive another day makes a racket any time one is anywhere near.

Sedge Warbler

I finally made it back to civilization i.e. the towpath.  It looked like someone had shot these house sparrows dead, but they were just flopping around in the dust.

It's worth a visit out here if you have the time or inclination.  I saw maybe 40 different species of birds, and about 10 of them I had to go home and look up because I had never seen them before.  It's a quick 10 minute walk from the Rainham train station, the visitor center is gorgeous and it has a nice cafe, and I would like to come back and sit around in the blinds overlooking the marsh ponds at some point in the future.  I'm sure the autumn migration here must be spectacular.