Just off the M25 on the north bank of the Thames, a rural idyll this isn’t. And that’s part of the attraction.
I made my way, by car, past Purfleet station where I have often arrived by train, for the short walk to the reserve, and parked in the car park. There were lots of birds around on the feeders and around the visitor centre; house sparrows, song thrush, green, gold and chaff finches too.
Standing outside the visitor centre, overlooking the reserve, you look over a wet grassland full of birds. On Friday, at first glance, there were lots of lapwings and teal and wigeon and shoveler. A Eurostar whizzed past and scared the lapwings into the air with some starlings and a few dunlin but I saw no golden plover. A local train moved past much more slowly and seemed to have no impact on the birds. There were planes overhead. A boat went past on the Thames heading upstream on the high tide. Cars and lorries were passing by too heading to Dagenham.
I wandered down the path but a well-placed bench made me stop and scan the bird-filled wetlands in front. A pair of pintails slept in the grass; coots fussed around; shelducks were in the distance but easy to pick out – as were the little egrets; tufted ducks swam and dived on a distant pool; greylags, canada geese and mute swans were the big birds; pied wagtails called overhead.
I was joined on the bench by two local volunteers. They told me that the bench, which was a very fine bench, had only been put in yesterday and showed me that it commemorated Mick Clayton who had died recently. It is a very fine bench and it has a very fine view. Many people will get a lot of pleasure from sitting on it.
I am not blind to water vole droppings though – there were many on a little well-trodden pathway from the water into a bankside burrow. Water vole droppings look a little like liquorice torpedoes come to think of it, although maybe we don’t want to think of it in quite that way. I kept looking for water voles from the bridge. There were occasional ripples on the surface of the smooth-surfaced straight reed-fringed waterway but every ripple had a coot at its focus.
I waited for about 10 minutes and added a few birds to my list (snipe calling, curlew calling, common gulls flying past, reed buntings in the reeds, wren too) but no water voles.
I visited a rather plush hide and then continued along the path by the water where the water voles should have been cavorting – but they weren’t. A movement in the reeds looked promising and turned out to be a very close and very nice-looking dabchick but wasn’t a water vole.
A magpie flew past – it looked a little like a liquorice allsort too.
I started retracing my steps and was overtaken by two RSPB staff who were heading back to the visitor centre. I smiled and said hello to them and they smiled and said hello to me and I got a message on Facebook from one of them later in the day saying that she had thought she recognised me but wasn’t completely sure at the time (Thanks for the message Nicole).
I was nearly back at ‘water vole droppings bridge’ – which is supposed to be water vole central and I still hadn’t seen one. Is water vole blindness something that can be treated on the NHS I wonder? Another long wait at the bridge was very pleasant but also very untroubled by water vole sightings and I was wondering how to treat the RSPB’s huge and wicked exaggeration of water vole numbers at Rainham Marshes when I saw one. It was quite quick, but quite water-voley. A vole swam across the channel, from left to right. Water voles swim really low in the water and always seem to have an arched back which means their heads stick out a bit at the front and their bums stick out a bit at the other end but their backs almost disappear in the water.
I had a quick look again from Mick’s bench and then passed through the visitor centre again. The lady who had greeted me when I arrived, with a very local accent, and suggested where to go for water voles was, I had been told by the two volunteers with whom I had had a chat, Mrs Clayton so I told her I’d seen water vole, sympathised with her for her loss and said that I’d enjoyed sitting on her husband’s bench and that it was perfectly positioned and very comfortable. She smiled and said she’d seen me sitting there and hoped that the bench would give lots of people pleasure. What might have been a difficult moment passed very easily and I’m glad I spoke to Mrs Clayton rather than just smiling and passing on.
My attention moved to the left of the path where I saw my first mallard of the visit and cormorants floated past on the Thames. There were supposed to be some rock pipits and occasional water pipits around in this area and that’s what I was looking for. A fellow birder pointed out a stonechat that was being photographed and we got talking. He was a beginner and when I said I was looking for rock pipits he said he’d never seen one, so that made me keener to find one.
But time was ticking away and it was time for me to head to Cambridge and the Cambridge Bird Club. I had a quick chat to the lady in the shop who told me that Fighting for Birds wasn’t exactly flying off the shelves and totted up my list of birds for the visit. I had seen 48 species (including Ross’s goose) of which that goose, pintail, rock pipit and, strangely, collared dove, were new for the reserve for me.
Rainham Marshes is really a reserve of Allsorts; Essex accents, Ross’s geese, Moroccan chick pea soup, some of the very few cattle inside the M25, views of the Thames, finches on the feeders and, yes, water voles too!
![Nigel Chadwick [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons](https://markavery.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Welcome_to_Rainham_Marshes_-_geograph.org_.uk_-_1601457.jpg)
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I regularly visit rainham, and in about 10 visits I saw them once last year. In summer however it is the best place I know to see common lizard and marsh frog and great for dragonflies.
Sounds like you had a good day, I do like rainham, not least because its the only place you can go in south Essex without a never ending stream of dog walkers scaring off the wildlife..!
Mark, I have to say, quite simply, I thoroughly enjoyed your account of your visit to a reserve which I’ve not yet had the pleasure of visiting myself. Additionally, and without any trace of being patronising , your treatment of your conversation with Mrs Clayton was sympathetic and utterly exemplary. I’m not sure I could have written of the occasion so easily! Well done, my friend!
However, and finally, I have to say you’ve broadened my horizons on liquorice somewhat significantly.
Best wishes,
John.
Sounds like a great place, must try to visit one day. We too have water voles like your experiences at Rainham, otherwise known as invisible dropping leavers, not leavers of invisible droppings- that wouldn’t work!
Don’t like the ‘critters’ reference though, it’s becomming an all pervasive Americanism creeping into our Natural History English
Mark, I am so glad Rainham is coming into its own. I remember going there with a certain group of people when it was being built and we were given an RSPB water vole pin badge to remember the visit. At the time I wondered why a water vole (although it is very nice) and tend to remember the lesser whitethroat that was singing well, the newly created education centre and the barges on the Thames that seemed almost to be higher than me. It always surprises me what mention of certain sites drags back from the memory bank.
Count yourself lucky, Mark – you spotted an attractive young female birder, a much rarer beast than a Water Vole. I’d pay good money to meet a female birder my age…
Rainham sounds fantastic, both for its wildlife and its staff and volunteers. Must go there and when I do I will look out for Mick’s bench as well as water voles and liquorice allsort coloured magpies.
There’s something very special about wildlife sanctuaries (or any good quality green space) in major cities. Gavin Weightman and Mike Birkhead’s ‘City Safari – Wildlife in London’ remains an all time favourite book of mine. And there is some wonderful work being done to bring people closer to nature in cities – e.g. ‘Wild Place Your space’ https://sites.google.com/site/wildplaceyourspace/
I was a young female birder once, but don’t remember much sign of any males flocking around, and in those days female birders were much rarer than they are now!
On a different subject Mark, I am responsble for the sale of two copies of your book, although not from the shelves of the shop at Rainham Marshes. One I purchased for a friend for her birthday, and her only comment was “you’d think that the RSPB never made any mistakes”! and the other was purchased for myself as a Christmas present. The only catch was that you signed it with my Dad’s name in it, as he bought it, even though he bought it for me! Spot the deliberate mistake! Anyhow, I’m quite enjoying it so far and it brought back fond memories of when I was in the Camargue helping Kate Lessells with her bee-eater project – getting eaten by mosquitos, snagged on barbed wire fences and sunburned! The birds were amazing though, I’d never been anywhere like it and was mesmerised.
I’ve been to Rainham many times and never seen a Water Vole (although I did see a weasel last Autumn) Your quest reminded me of a brother’s frustrating search to see Hawfinch. We grew up close to the New Forest, pukka habitat where everyone sees them, mostly perched high in trees or flying away rather quickly. After a while he simply refused to believe they existed, they were the bird equivalent of fairies or ufos – until the day we discovered a small flock, hopping about a lawn during a bird-race and they became real.