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.

8/2/11: Chasing Waxwings round the Emirates

I was at a meeting in our new Green Party HQ off Old St/City Rd today, so I followed up reports of Waxwing outside Arsenal Football Club's Emirates stadium, and I got to see 5 in Drayton Park road before they took off for somewhere else. That's my third lot this winter. Of course this had to be the day a bunch were also reported from Bourne Rd in my home Borough of Bexley .......

The Waxwings were just over the road from Islington's Gillespie Park Nature Reserve, which I'd never been to before, so I had a look round. There was a Song Thrush singing on the other side of the railway line as the light began to fade.

Earlier in the day I'd wandered round Bunhill Fields burial ground on City Road, and found a colony of Claytonia perfoliata (called Miner's' Lettuce and various other vernacular names), a non-native species I've not seen before, though I soon discovered that its presence here has been previously recorded.

Claytonia perfoliata, Bunhill Fields burial ground, City Road, London

29/1/11: Wings of Red, Wax - from Tooting Common to Finsbury Park

An unpleasantly cold LNHS meeting at Tooting Bec Common in search of Lesser Spotted Woodpecker (none found). There had been a report of Waxwings on the Common so we set off to see them first, finding circa 40 Waxwings in the 'triangle' east of Balham station, near the underpass to Cavendish Rd. They were pecking away at something on their Sycamore perching place on the railway embankment, but soon took flight at the approach of a passing train. Amongst other species seen were: 8 Redwing, 1 Sparrowhawk (over), 2 Great Spotted Woodpecker, 1 Nuthatch and 12 Ring-necked Parakeet. Those on the lake included 4 confiding Egyptian Geese, which were presumably used to being fed, 10 Shoveler, Tufted Duck and 2 Mute Swans.

Quite a lot of Waxwings have been reported from the Islington area lately, so I made my way to the Victoria Line, baled out at Finsbury Park station and crossed the road to the ground of that name. The highlight here was circa 98 Redwings and 95 Starlings feeding together, on the north side slope. Some of the other birds seen were 4 Chaffinch and 2 or 3 Goldfinch, and on the lake - which I hadn't looked at on previous visits - 11 Shoveler, 11 Pochard, 28 Tufted Duck, 2 Cormorant + 1 over, 4 Greylag, 22(+?) Canada Geese and 2 Mute Swan.

Some Finsbury Park lake pictures follow:

2 male and 1 female Pochard (foreground) with 4 male Tufted Duck behind

3 Mallard (male and female in foreground), female Pochard and male and female Tufted Duck

Mute Swan, with a male of each of Tufted, Pochard and Mallard Duck (left to right, behind)

30/12/10: Waxwings ten a penny in Teddington

OK, I'm not a 'Twitcher' and wouldn't travel to Shetland - or even halfway across London - in the hope of being able to pick a rare Gull out of a crowd. But Waxwings appealed, and I'd never previously seen one. So I'd been keeping my eye on the London Bird Club wiki, especially the reports of Waxwings hanging out in Balham several days running, as the given location was just up the road from where the Green Party HQ used to be.

There were none to be seen when I arrived, but it was obvious they must have been in a couple of well-berried trees in some grass outside a couple of small blocks of flats. These had now been commandeered by a couple of Blackbirds. A small flock of birds did whoosh over, catching me by surprise - they didn't sound right for Starlings. Maybe it was them, They were heading in the direction of the other local street they'd been reported from, but no luck there either.

Armed with a new report from Teddington, fresh in this morning while I was on the move, did I try there or pop down to Tooting Common in the hope of seeing my first Lesser-spotted Woodpecker, then head north to the site of some Waxwing sightings in Finchley, now possibly past its sell-by date? I opted for the former - there was a decent number of birds, they'd been seen a very short while ago and I only had to go back up to Clapham Junction, then back out again towards Shepperton.

I was in luck. Just as I approached the Teddington location (well, Fulwell actually) at a bout 13.45, a number of birds descended on a garden then, disturbed by something flew back up into a tree on the other side of the street. A couple of other binocular-toting individuals confirmed that I was in the right place. There, up in the top of a very large tree, its branches spreading out over a main road, were some 50 Waxwings, for the most part nonchalantly preening themselves and showing off their distinctive profile with that swept-back' tuft of crown feathers. It can't have been more than about 10 minutes before they all took flight after someone slammed a car door, and although I wandered around for a bit to see if I could find them again, and came back past the original location, that was that. The benefits of mobile internet access, a £7.50 travelcard (so that's 15p a Waxwing) and a stroke of luck on the timing. For the record, what had attracted them to this particular spot was a rather small pink-fruited Rowan, right by a front garden wall and the pedestrian pavement.

Of course I noted down a few plants here and there whilst I was out and about. There was a small colony of Annual Nettle by an old telephone exchange in Balham, and Lesser Celandine leaves showing by a housing estate on Balham Hill.

This Antirrhinum was in flower on a railway bridge in Fulwell, despite the two lots of snow and sub-zero temperatures recently. The brickwork also sported a number of Greater Celandines.

And next to the bridge was this stand of Euphorbia, probably E. lathyris, Caper Spurge.

Three Stinking Iris were along a footpath by Fulwell Golf Course, and didn't appear to have come from any deliberate plantings.