A record count of Common Teal

Pintail at East India Dock Basin, 9/2/2012

Greylag Geese at East India Dock Basin, 9/2/2012

High tide was just before 5 pm today and was over seven metres and for the first time in a week or so it put some water in the basin. I arrived at about 4:30 pm and as soon as I got a view of the basin I thought I had a good chance of breaking the patch record count of Common Teal. I counted around 250 on the basin and quickly headed for Bow Creek where I added another 210, both counts were conservative so the combined total was over 460. The tidal River Lea extends just over a mile to the north of the patch and recently there have been close to 1.000 Common Teal between the Thames at the basin and the Bow backwaters at Three Mills, a spectacular count anywhere, let alone an Inner London borough. Given the good numbers of Gadwall present in the Three Mills area it was not surprising that a pair had drifted south to the patch and made it onto the yearlist.Other wildfowl included two Greylag Geese, seven Canda Geese, 16 Shelduck, the overwintering female Pintail and ten Tufted Duck. On first inspection the regular wader roost was deserted but I found ten Redhank and two Common Sandpipers roosting at the northern end of the Pura Foods peninsula, on the way back I found two Common Sandpipers were now in the regular roost, a short walk back to the new roost revealed that the original two were still in situ, four is a very good winter count but then I found another three roosting on the pontoon on the last meander, so I retraced my steps again and the other four were still present; we have had seven birds before, during autumn migration, but this is the best winter count of this species at the lower Lea. It was very quiet on the passerine front with three Reed Buntings in the pylon reedbed the only record of note.