Heybridge Creek twitching Northern Waterthrush

   I headed down to London for a weekend of visiting David Darrel-Lambert, and on the Saturday we decided to spend the day out birding in the adjacent county of Essex, where there were a few interesting birds on offer, the most notable of these of course being the Northern Waterthrush that turned up about a month prior. Since its initial discovery, it had become more erratic in its sightings in the small creek it had frequented, and we did not know how long we would have to wait before we might actually see the bird.

  We arrived on site at 07:25, just as the visibility started to improve. Maddeningly, it turned out the bird had briefly visited at 07:18, and as such we had just missed it, although seeing it in the near darkness would not have been a particularly exciting. Still, that meant we had to wait around, and in the end we endured two and a half hours in the freezing cold waiting for the bird to return, which fortunately it eventually did.

  The bird returned at around 10:00, calling loudly as it flew in. It then spent about 5-10 minutes moving up and down the creek feeding on the edge of the frozen waterway before flying into a nearby tree and then off again at height. During its short stay it offered absolutely brilliant views jumping across broken reed stems and walking along the edge of the ice, well worth the long and painful wait. 

-Northern Waterthrush

Species List:
Heybridge Creek: Canada Goose, Egyptian Goose, Eurasian Wigeon, Mallard, Eurasian Teal, Tufted Duck, Feral Pigeon, Stock Dove, Common Wood Pigeon, Eurasian Collared Dove, Common Moorhen, Northern Lapwing, Common Snipe, Common Redshank, Common Greenshank, Black-headed Gull, Mediterranean Gull, Common Gull, European Herring Gull, Lesser Black-backed Gull, Great Cormorant, Little Egret, Eurasian Sparrowhawk, Common Kestrel, Eurasian Magpie, Western Jackdaw, Carrion Crow, Eurasian Blue Tit, Great Tit, Eurasian Skylark, Cetti's Warbler, Long-tailed Tit, Eurasian Wren, Common Starling, Song Thrush, Common Blackbird, European Robin, Dunnock, House Sparrow, Grey Wagtail, Pied Wagtail, Meadow Pipit, Eurasian Chaffinch, Common Reed Bunting, Northern Waterthrush,