First Swallow of the year

As I've mentioned in a previous post the money allocated for the de-silting of the basin has been withdrawn. A short-term solution to this problem is to raise the sluices on the inner dock gate to keep in the water entering the basin on a high tide; and so Gary, my fellow patch worker, had arranged to meet Andy, the Lea Valley Regional Park Warden, to get the job done and as I had a rare Monday off work I decided to go along and see if I could lend a hand. Andy turned out to be an enthusiastic young bloke and a keen botanist, he soon had the sluice gates sorted out with minimal help from Gary and myself. It was another glorious day, more like June than mid April and we decided to do a few hours skywatching in the hope of a large raptor, we had good views of an adult female Peregrine, a Sparrowhawk downriver at Silvertown which put up everything on the river and had me thinking that perhaps something bigger had caused the commotion but whatever it was we couldn't find it; a female Kestrel made up the trinity of raptors for the day. The only other addition to the yearlist was Swallow, I picked up two relatively low birds heading north-west, other moving migrants included a Meadow Pipit north and a very high-flying Jay heading north-west. Other migrants included two Northern Wheatears, one each on the Pura Foods peninsula and Orchard Wharf and two Common Terns whilst a 1st-winter Common Gull was also probably on the move rather than just a tardy leftover from the winter. Other highlights included three Shelduck, the Common Teal pair still hanging on at Bow Creek, a flock of five vocal Otstercatchers flying up the Thames, two Little Ringed Plovers, four Common Sandpipers in the roost, a pair of Linnets and the follwing singing warblers: two Reed Warblers, at least three Blackcaps and a Common Whitethroat.