Damp Essex Birding.

After this weeks exploits in Sunny/windy Norfolk it was back to Essex last night and this Morning i decided to head to The Essex Riviera,ok,just an Essex River,The Crouch and back to Bluehouse Farm,situated about 6 or 7 miles down the Crouch from the North Sea.
Birding in Essex is always a bit of a challenge compared to Norfolk as it simply doesn't produce the same numbers or species as our lucky east anglian cousins,nethertheless there are some good sites in Essex and some very good coastal sites,just wish that some people would visit them sometimes as it seems many are constantly empty.
We (me and Dave Cornwell) arrived at the site around 9am,well i did,dave strolled round a little while after me,catching up with me as i was scanning the field looking for a probable Wheatear that shot across me when i really wasn't paying attention,bit late for Wheatear but it looked good for one and the colouring and size were right,just a bit of a flash and it dissapeared into some long grass.
The weather was mild and grey but as of yet,no rain,this would not last.
At the first scrape,we had pretty much zilch,a little grebe and little egret was about everything of note,so we moved to the 2nd hide where again we had pretty much nothing,a few Teal etc but wildfowl numbers are still lowish but they should improve in the next few weeks,every now and then geese would fly around but we decided to move to the 3rd hide,on arriving it started to rain,this would continue for the next 3/4 hours until we left but in such time we did actually have some birding action.
We had Marsh Harrier which actually came onto the scrape in front of the hide although because of the poor light and rain the pictures i got are pretty bad,really want to get this bird in decent light,hopefully early next week if i get a bit of time.We had a few snipe (7),plenty of Redshank up and down,Curlews and dunlin above and plenty of Wildfowl,good numbers of Geese went past,around 100 Brents and 60 Barnacles.
By about 3.30 we decided to make a bolt for it,a mile and a half back to the car upon an exposed Sea wall with a high,high tide nearly catching us,luckily for us it almost stopped raining for the entire walk back so we didn't get too soaked,either way,really starting to enjoy this site,still plenty to look for there,can go the other way up the sea wall,could be worth a try next time to see whats lurking on the Crouch,till next time,heres some not so good pictures.....