Gull trouble

Gulls Gulls Gulls, Rainham tip 22/11/12

Today I made one of the great London birder pilgrimages to the wildlife mecca that is Rainham tip in Essex for the first time. Well covered in the 'blogosphere' or whatever you want to call it, the tip has been a fabled haunt with local birders for years; a place where legends are born, Collin's guides are flicked through furiously and tears are shed. Although I've been round the marshes countless times, I'd never made it further than the cake counter in the RSPB cafe. But a glowing, blustery late-November day seemed like the right time to sort that.

Why would you possibly want to spend a day off looking at a tip some among you may ask (and rightly)? Well surprisingly, large, open landfill sites like Rainham are a pretty good place to spot wildlife, especially in winter; a curious glitch in the natural fabric, creating as they do a strange, shifting, ecological niche for many species. But there's only one reason anyone comes here and that's GULLS and who doesn't love them eh?

There's probably not another family of birds in the UK that divide people, or birders, as much as gulls. Some hate them, some are cagey, put off by the ID challenges they pose, others are totally obsessed, going on about windows and mirrors and trailing edges, and all the rest. For what it's worth I think they're bloody fantastic birds; alternately graceful and scrappy, easily recognisable and total ID headfucks, they're part of the lifeblood of our island. Rainham is a place where all this is evident, where numerous species of gulls, maybe seven or eight on a good day, jostle and bitch side by side, strutting about in muck and doing what gulls do. Aint it great?! When it comes to gulls I'm ok, not as sharp as many others but I'm always keen to improve. The tip regularly holds a few Yellow-legged gulls and Caspian gulls so today I thought I'd try and flex my head on them for a bit.

Unfortunately, despite the weather being fair, the one thing working against me was the wind - the kind of wind that rocks a stationary car back and forth and makes you wish you hadn't worn a hat. But parking up at the riverside car park by the equally famed Stone Barges, I headed along the path for a bit with the largely landscaped tip looming up on the left. It wasn't hard to find where the action was and I followed  the squalling clouds of gulls bombing about the sky to an open section of tip. It was instantly easy to see the attraction with probably 2000 gulls on this section in plain view. Some were huddled in ragged, stationary rows while others swooped around to avoid the giant crushing trucks that lumbered about. Flocks of starlings darted among them, along with dozens of crows. There was no shelter so I did what I could and started working that mother.

Ok, first impressions - daunting! Ha. It's funny how when walking by the river or down on the coast, I feel pretty happy with the commoner large gull species but here, when faced with hundreds of the same all camped together, it feels like starting from scratch! Doubt kicks in "Herring, Herring, Herring, Lesser...no hang on...THAT'S a Yellow-leg (but...)" followed by frustration. With perhaps three species of large gull represented more than others and within those, birds of around four different age groups (and their requisite subtle plumages) it's easy for the head to spin. I'm sure I'm not the first person to feel like that. I think the trick as ever is take a deep breath and go slowly, forget that tick you want, you'll get it eventually. Maybe. It feels more like bird WATCHING y'know? As it should be.

Anyway, great stuff but I got well beaten today. It didn't help that the wind shook the scope all over the place constantly and when it's trying to rip your glasses off your face too, it's probably time to call it a day. Still, well worth the trip, I'm putting this one down as a recce, round 2 it gets serious!

A wildlife spectacle. Seriously.