14/2/10: Birds along the DLR - Devons Rd and All Saints

To get home from the Waterworks Nature Reserve I decided to go to Stratford, take the DLR to Lewisham, and the train from there back to Barnehurst.

I got off at a couple of stations in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets in order to see if there was any interesting 'lineside' vegatation (which there wasn't).

However, 13 Linnets settled in a small tree by a scrappy car park behind the Lewisham-bound platform at Devons Rd, and stayed put for quite a while.

At All Saints some small birds were high in some trees a little way away, but remained obscured by lots of branches and unfavourable light. Fancying from glimpses that at least one of them was a Goldfinch, I decided to exit the station and try and get a better look. Persistence was rewarded with 6 Redwings and a slightly larger 'thrush', which I took to be a Song Thrush, feeding on the grass in All Saints (East India Dock Rd.) churchyard on the Montague Place side. There were at least 7 Goldfinches high up in some large London Planes, hanging on and apparently feeding from the globular fruits - something I've not seen before.

Shortly thereafter a good view was had of 11 Goldfinches feeding on the ground in the churchyard, by the base of a tree, whilst there were still at least a few others up in the aforementioned Planes.

Spotted Medick and a Barbarea sp.('Winter Cress') were noted on a mounded 'raised bed' at the junction of East India Dock Rd and Cotton St.

There was a Mute Swan on the water just past Greenwich DLR station.