14th January - the water level at the main pit is still as high as I can remember seeing it. With the spit completely submerged, the dabblers seem to have dwindled and the gulls have all but disappeared. Likewise, there is nowhere for the Lapwing or geese to congregate, so there are fewer birds to look through. There are still a few Snipe lurking in the reed fringes and the occasional calling Water Rail, whilst the aythyas seem to like the conditions and there are plenty of Tufties and Pochard scattered around, though unfortunately nothing scarcer as yet.
Viewing is difficult because after the first 50 yards of muddy path, the path has been covered by the lake, so you are wading through up to a foot of water - not ideal for looking for birds! Today I decided to wade my way towards the flood meadows to see what they looked like. I eventually made it to the dry ground of the slightly raised railway line, but couldn't get any further as the meadows are still under a foot or two of water. The Thames has obviously fallen a couple of feet from its high, as you can now make out the banks and some stretches of grass that were under water a few days ago. The water was also fairly close to reaching the train tracks, but had subsided back to the meadow.
There wasn't much to see here either, but I set my scope up to look through the small gathering of gulls that had gathered on the newly emerged grassland - they comprised almost totally Black-headed. As I was getting ready to set off back up the path, I noticed a Chiffchaff feeding actively low down in the track side vegetation only a few yards to my left. It was immediately obvious that this was a pale bird and I had my suspicions that it was a tristis type. I was able to get good views at close quarters through both bins and scope as it fed and could see that it was basically a pale buffy toned bird above and almost white below. The obvious whitish super had a buffy tone in front of the eye and the ear coverts were also buff in tone. There were no olive or yellow tones at all apart from greenish edges to the remiges. The legs and bill were dark blackish. The bird did not call at this stage and soon flew past me down the track, though I was fairly happy that this was indeed a Siberian Chiffchaff. I watched the bird fly over the track into low vegetation and again got it in my scope - I could now see the original bird and an olive toned collybita and then amazingly another almost identical pale looking bird - 2 tristis! At this stage I phoned the news out. I was eventually joined by Graham S and then LGRE and Mike C. Apart from a further 2 collybita, the Chiffchaffs had become scarce, but eventually one and then both birds reappeared. They then showed reasonably well, but in the bright sunlight, photos of the birds were often not truly reflective of their actual colour in the field. They were also heard to call, a single monotone 'pew', the final clinching feature. One more collybita appeared to complete a nice wintering group of Chiffchaffs and with further known birds around the base of the spit, there are at least 7 birds on site.
With my limited digiscoping abilities, I did not attempt to take photos, but the 3 other guys did, so I will try and nick one or two to post here later.
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