14/2/11: Waxwings in London Borough of Bexley

The London Bird Club wiki was listing Waxwing sightings in Russell Close, Bexleyheath, and at Bourne Mead, opposite the playing fields at Hall Place, during the past couple of days, and I couldn't resist seeing the species in my home Borough after three lots of sightings elsewhere in the capital this winter.

I therefore set off on one of my indirect sorties to Bexleyheath Broadway .......

At Bursted Woods and former the Pitch and Putt course (Barnehurst) were 2 or 3 Redwing, 2 Mistle Thrush, Ring-necked Parakeets, Wood Pigeons, Great Tit, Blue Tit and Carrion Crow.

No sign of Waxwings in Russell Close, but there was a large Cotoneaster stripped of berries, and another still laden over the road.

At Martens Grove (Bexleyheath): 2 or 3 Redwing, 1 Mistle Thrush, 1 Blackbird, 2 male Chaffinch, 8 Goldfinch feeding on the ground, Ring-necked Parakeets, Blue Tits, Great Tits, Robin, Magpie, and Carrion Crows.

Bourne Mead (Crayford) - off Bourne Rd, opposite Hall Place playing fields: great - the Waxwings were still there, camped in a tree above a heavily berry-laden Cotneaster, with individuals intermittently coming down to feed. I counted around 30 birds resplendent in the late afternoon sun and, when they finally flew off south east, beyond railway line, there may have actually been around 40 birds in total. 150 had been reported yesterday.

A serious birder was a few yards the other side of the Cotoneaster, with a large zoon lens on a DSLR. He turned out to be a local chap, but said he hadn't managed to get any particularly good photos.

Hall Place North (Bexleyheath): 22 Redwing, 2 Mistle Thrush, Great Tit, Wood Pigeons. 28 House Sparrows in the hedge of the adjacent school. 18 Ring-necked Parakeets over the north end of Gravel Hill.

4/1/2011: Bursted Wood and Danson Park birding ....

Bursted Wood (Barnehurst): Very close view of a Great Spotted Woodpecker which came within about 20 feet of me, only 10 feet up a small tree, before realising I was there and finding somewhere bigger and further away. Also 1 Jay on a tree out in the open near the Primary School. Plus all the usual suspects: Carrion Crows, Wood Pigeons, Ring-necked Parakeets, Magpies.

Danson Park (Bexleyheath/Welling): Still a largish ice sheet on the lake. Three species I've not seen here before. 50+ Shoveler, 6 Pochard, 4 Tufted Duck, 18 Mallard (mainly males), 1 or 2 Great Crested Grebe, 8 Cormorant, 1 Grey Heron, 2 Egyptian Geese, 46 Canada Geese, lots of Coot and Moorhens, 2 Stock Doves amongst a large number of ground-foraging of Wood Pigeons, 5 Magpies, Carrion Crows, 15 Starlings, a few Ring-necked Parakeets, and lots of Black-headed Gulls.

24/12/10: Danson Park Shoveler surprise

Bursted Wood:

Checked out the tree line along the north side of the former pitch-and-putt course. 2 Blue Tit, 3 Long-tailed Tit. Plus a couple of Great Tit turning over leaves on bits of ground free of snow.
Inside the wood itself several Magpies and Carrion Crow were about. There were 3 or 4 Blue Tit in the hospital grounds. Some 40 Wood Pigeon flew overhead and 3 Ring-necked Parakeets. A Wren darted under some ivy at the base of a tree.

17 more Wood Pigeon were in a couple of trees on The Green.

8 House Sparrows were in a garden shrub on Herbert Rd., Bexleyheath, and several Starlings were seen here, then more along Church Rd.

There were a couple of Collared Doves along Upton Rd.

17 Starlings were in a tree at the junction of Lion Rd and Upton Rd, and about 30 more were in a tall Poplar some way away south of Martin Dene.

In an attempt to find out if it was possible to get onto Bexleyheath Golf Course I ended up on Iris Avenue, but there was no (legitimate) way in here. I was, however, pleased to see 16 young plants of native Broom along the bank leading up to the roadway.

I followed a footpath that continued across the A2, where a Great Tit was singing very loudly to be heard above the din of the traffic.

An alleyway leading onto Arcadian Av. harboured Hedera colchica, probably a garden throw-out, and a Japanese Honeysuckle, likely seeded from a specimen in a nearby garden.

Heading west I went through the underpass that comes out at the bottom end of Lodge Lane, on my way to Danson Park.

Danson Park:

Danson lake was pretty much completely frozen over apart from a small area around an island with trees on, by where the solar panels are sat on a floating raft. This had had the effect of concentrating most of the waterbirds in one place, though the large number of Black-headed Gulls were spread between this location and the ice up by the boating shed.

I was surprised to see 52 Shoveler - some swimming and most standing on the ice - my first record of this species here (though I've not visited in winter before). There were 40 Coot, 52 Carrion Crow (that all homed in on some duck-feeding kids), 14+ Moorhen, 14 Canada Geese, quite a few Mallard, several Ring-necked Parakeets, 5 Long-tailed Tit, a (Mistle?) Thrush, 1 Great Spotted Woodpecker, 1 Great Tit, 1 Blue Tit and 1 Robin.

27/11/10: Seeing the wood and the trees

A selection of tree photos taken today ....

Tree with a skirt of leaves - on the lower branches, and on the ground. Former Pitch and Putt golf course, north side of Bursted Wood, Barnehurst

The yellowed leaves of Sweet Chestnut continue to light up Bursted Wood, Barnehurst, in late November

Yellowed Sweet Chestnut leaves stand out against the dark green of an ivy-clad tree, Bursted Wood, Barnehurst

Tree silhouettes, Hall Place North, south of Bexleyheath

A row of trees stretching down the hill at Hall Place North, silhouetted at dusk

A deliberately blurred shot of a 'naked' tree at Hall Place North

Dead tree, Martens Grove

Trees in the dark, Martens Grove

17/4/2010: First Speckled Wood of year, Wood Anemones open wide

More spring is sprung in Barnehurst ....

Bursted Wood on a sunny afternoon and the Wood Anemone flowers are open wide. As are the golden blooms of Lesser Celandine. Two Speckled Wood butterflies, my first of the year, chase each other as the sun streams through the still open canopy of a late spring.

Narcissus in Bursted Wood

Another swathe of Wood Anemone carpets the top of the cutting behind Barnehurst station's down platform along Hornbeam Lane. As usual the view was somewhat spoilt by the mass of litter chucked over the fence further along the Lane by morally and intellectually-challenged travellers and left to accumulate - for months at a time - by a railway company that never-the-less always seems to have the time and money to cut too much vegetation down too often and too short.

10/4/2010: Wood Anemone wonder

I knew there were some Wood Anemones (Anemone nemorosa) in Bursted Wood (London Borough of Bexley), having found the leaves later in the season. OK I was living elsewhere for a long time, but I'm not sure quite how I failed to visit when the flowers were out. So I was impressed by the great areas of the woodland floor now clearly covered in dissected leaves, and studded with white flowers, in what is a modest-sized and very heavily used suburban wood.

Wood Anemones carpet the ground in Bursted Wood

This closer view shows the flowers starting to shut for the night

19/8/09: Mining Bees and new Broom at Bursted Wood, Martens Grove fruitfulness

I counted in excess of 300 nests of what appear to be solitary mining bees on the sunny, shallowly sloping bank between Erith Rd and Bursted Wood. The pale, sandy, excavated soil shows up strongly against the short turf. Despite watching carefully I only saw one bee enter and exit its single entrance hole, and it looked like a slightly over-sized Honeybee.

Mining Bee nests on bank between Erith Rd and Bursted Wood

Closer view showing single entrance holes

Being a fan of heathland and heathland plants I was pleased to count 13 young Broom plants (some pictured above) by the slip road to the hospital site. There had been 3 larger plants here, but these suddenly died a couple of years ago after some idiot agency killed off a wide strip of vegetation up to the wood margin. Quite why is beyond me, as being on the outside of the bend it wasn't impeding driver sight lines. I guess trimming back the bramble shoots now and again was just too much bother ........

A closer examination of a weedy corner on the Long Lane Texaco forecourt revealed three plants of Catmint (Nepeta cataria), rather than the one reported in a previous posting.

There were 2 Painted Lady butterflies flitting around the car park behind the Naval Volunteer pub on Queens Rd, Bexleyheath.

I cut back to Barnehurst via Martens Grove, where good crops of Blackberry, Rose, Dogwood and Sloe fruits were in evidence, along with a Speckled Wood and a Meadow Brown butterfly.

Dogwood fruit, Martens Grove

Sloe fruit, Martens Grove