Well, where can you see swamps, meadows, wild flowers, scrub, woodland, lakes, riverside, rough grassland, and even a Victorian monument, all in an hour’s walk, and in easy reach of London? Wraysbury is the answer.
Comfrey by the lakeRing-necked Parakeet in its nest holeMove over, Alabama Swamps, this is Wraysbury! Sheep and Jackdaws on the banks of the reservoir. The Jackdaws devour insect grubs in the grass, especially in sheep droppings.
Colne Brook, May blossom, Lombardy poplars
Cowslips, BugleDaisy lawn, Whitethroat scrub habitatMute Swan drinking – the scene may look peaceful, but his wings and tail are raised threateningly even though no other birds were about! Such is the mating season.Complicated, or what? In August 1832 it must have seemed well worth setting in stone the rights to not being flooded by anyone deliberately raising the water level above the limit defined here …
I don’t know if I’d set this in stone, but I heard 5 warblers singing, and caught a typical glimpse of a Cetti’s warbler diving from a bush beside the lake – big, dark brown, it really wasn’t any other bird. Still, I didn’t hear it call, which would have decided the matter beyond reasonable doubt. So, a 5-and-a-half warbler walk, I guess.
Butterflies: Large white, Small white, Brimstone, Holly blue, Peacock, Speckled Wood.
Odonata: Banded Demoiselle, Common blue (teneral, i.e. just emerged).
Other insects: Mayfly, Alder fly.
On the way home, I went round Heathrow airport, and a Skylark sang to me through the open car window from the grassy areas beside the runways.
Well, I guess the point of a walk in nature in May is to see what is in flower, what birds are singing, and which insects have emerged (in other words, it’s all about sex). The first warbler to make itself heard was the Blackcap, with many singing males trying out different brief songs. They were mixed in with Garden Warblers, which have a distinctly longer and more even song. A Cetti’s Warbler or two sang their loud abrupt call chwitipitit, chwitipitit: once heard, never forgotten. I couldn’t find any Sedge or Reed Warblers by the river for some reason. In the thorny scrub, a couple of Chiffchaffs sang their names, and many Whitethroats rasped out their short scratchy song, flying up to the tops of Hawthorn bushes and hopping about for the optimal perch.
A Little Egret flapped slowly across the lake: it would once have been thought a wonderful sighting, but the species has happily spread northwards and is now quite common on British coasts and lakes.
I was however delighted to hear the wheezing spring call of a male Greenfinch. It was until recently a common bird around towns and villages, but the population was halved by the Trichomonas parasite in the 2000s. Here in London it almost completely disappeared, and it is only slowly recovering.
I glimpsed one damselfly, probably a Common Blue.
Chicken of the Woods fungus on a fallen Poplar. Some find it delicious, others terrifying!
A handsome parasitic wasp, on the hunt for caterpillars
Suddenly it’s spring! The cherries and magnolias and flowering pears are all trumpeting their splendour.
In my garden, I hear the amazing sweetness of a Blackcap singing somewhere in the block of little gardens. He must be newly-arrived from Africa, as he certainly won’t find a female in such an unpromising territory – Blackcaps like woodland edges where they are safe and undisturbed. But he sings, high and pure, far too good a warbler to be any usual garden bird, though our Robins, Blackbirds, Dunnocks, Great and Blue Tits, and Goldfinches sing sweetly too. Somehow it seems silent in the city as he sings; I really can’t hear any trains or planes or trucks in this perfect spring moment.
First sight of a Blackcap this spring, right out in the open, and singing beautifully! The male songster has the smart black cap; the female, a warm brown cap of the same shape.
A pair of Brimstone butterflies basked and showed off their marvellous dancing flight — jinking like a rugby footballer to keep safe from predators — in the warm sunshine on the entrance ramp meadow.
One or two Bee-flies hovered in their distinctive way (cheating by resting their front legs on a flower). They’re parasites of bumblebees, but so fascinating and beautiful that their lifestyle is quite forgiven.
A Brimstone momentarily resting on some early Forget-me-nots
After a long cold spell, it again felt like spring today, and despite the cloud I went to Wraysbury, thinking that it could be a good time for warblers.
I was greeted by a pair of Cormorants on a bleached branch beside the lake. And a moment later by the first of many Blackcaps. Warbler the first.
A little way along the path, a rapid and rich warble went on .. and on .. and on – aha! A Garden Warbler. (How to tell Garden from Blackcap? “Blackcap’s Brief.” Well, good enough for a first approximation.) Warbler the second.
I walked on a few paces, and glimpsed something small and brown in the willows. Binoculars showed an unmistakable Garden Warbler – Sylvia borin[g] – pretty much uniformly coloured, or rather, so beautifully countershaded that it looks flat in sunlight, quite the clever camouflage trick.
It started to sing – and was almost drowned out by the deafening repetitive din of a Cetti’s Warbler (roughly, Chwit-i-Pit-i-Pit! Chwit-i-Pit-i-Pit!), as usual without a glimpse of the songster. Warbler the third.
I then saw my first Banded Demoiselle, indeed my first flying damselfly or dragonfly, of the year. It’s always a lovely moment. A few bright yellow (male) Brimstone butterflies skittered about or sunbathed: perhaps the butter-coloured insect is the original “butter fly”, or perhaps the name refers to the fluttering flight of the whole group – it must make them very hard for predators like birds and dragonflies to catch them, and given how common it is to see a butterfly with holes pecked in its wings, it is easy to believe that anti-predator adaptations are highly advantageous.
Other conspicuous insects were a lot of Sawflies, looking much like tiny red wasps with black-and-yellow striped tails, and numerous large Bumblebees enjoying the purple Comfrey which is abundant beside the river.
The droning chatter of a Reed Warbler came out of another Willow beside the lake: Warbler the fourth.
From across the river, just audible but quite definite, came the Chiff-Chaff-Chiff-Chaff-Chiff-Chaff song of .. you guessed it. Warbler the fifth.
Across the bridge and onto the flat scrub, and in almost the first bush was a Whitethroat singing its short simple scratchy ditty. (Presumably female Whitethroats find it enticing. Or other males find it repellent, one or the other. Maybe both, actually.) Warbler the sixth.
I reconnoitred the wood-and-scrubby area for possible Willow Warblers (they don’t inhabit willows any more than Willow Tits do), but they don’t seem to have arrived yet. Some Song Thrushes improvised their fine, repeated melodies of many different repeated phrases.
Today I learnt that Bee-Flies can fly while mating tail-to-tail…
Several “firsts of the year” today: a Blackcap sang in the reserve; the first Speckled Wood butterfly, closely followed by a pair of males fighting in a clearing; the first Comma on the Picnic Meadow; and these splendid Bee-Flies with their handsomely pictured wings, demonstrating that they may be short, round, and furry, but they can fly while coupled tail-to-tail, not as elegantly as a wheel of Dragonflies maybe, but unquestionably able to get airborne, one of the two flying (of course) backwards.
Netty building a habitat woodpile, the logs packed with clippings to keep it moist and full of insect life
After building a habitat woodpile, we spent the day scything the meadow and raking up the clippings to deplete the mineral status little by little. It seems to be working nicely, as the range of insects and flowers is plainly increasing. Netty found some Vetch and Mouse-Ear; and there are attractive Red-Tailed Bumblebees to join the Buff-Tails and White-Tails that are emerging from their winter lairs.
The air was full of birdsong from Chiffchaffs, Blackbirds, Great Tits, Blue Tits, Goldfinches, Robins, Dunnocks and the newly-arrived Blackcap. A Sparrowhawk circled overhead. The cherries are all in flower. Spring has sprung.
Well, I had two delightful surprises on my Wraysbury walk today. The first, as you can see, was a Cardinal Beetle, by no means a common sight any more, and unlike many claimed sightings, seems to be the actual species. I say seems to be, because the antennae were not especially toothy: the detail below shows that the end segments were certainly well toothed, the rest not. So either this was an individual with a slightly aberrant pattern, or it was a closely related species.
Cardinal Beetle – detail of antenna, well toothed at least at the end
The other thing was the warblers. There have been hardly any Chiffchaffs around in the reserve, but today I heard about six of them. They struggled to be heard above a background of Blackcaps with varied songs; and in some spots, a barrage of Garden Warblers as well (mixed with a bit of Blackbird, Robin, Chaffinch, Robin, and Wren). And, just once, the second delightful surprise: a Lesser Whitethroat, with its distinctive trill. So it was a Four Warbler Walk. I listened out carefully for Sedge Warbler, Cetti’s Warbler, and Willow Warbler but there weren’t any singing – the Cetti’s were surely lurking nearby.
Overhead, apart from the planes, were a Buzzard, gently mobbed by a Carrion Crow, later joined by a circling Sparrowhawk.
The brambles and herbs (from nettles to Comfrey) were being used as perches by a mass of Banded Demoiselles, both the blue males with their glorious dark blue wing-patches, and the more subdued green females. They were joined by a few Common Blue Damselflies, the first of the year for me, as the demoiselles were.
With another day of freezing fog, very dangerous on the roads, nature is telling us that, yes, global warming or no, it’s winter. The false acacia, totally leafless, whirs with activity. A big wood pigeon sits impassively, ignoring the small passers-by. Within a few minutes, these include 3 goldfinches, keeping well away from each other in the branches; 2 male blackbirds, similarly, their heads high on the lookout for competitive activity; 4 ring-necked parakeets, never settling for more than a moment, jumping up squawking at the slightest provocation; 2 redwings, handsome with their contrasting eyestripes; 1 fieldfare, markedly bigger, and a handsome bird when seen in crisp winter sunshine rather than today’s murky fog. A few minutes later, a blackcap appeared: still a bird that we think of as a summer visitor, though a few pass through in winter from colder places. Later still, a great tit jumped in and wriggled about; and a little flock of 6 starlings blew in for a few minutes, sadly diminished from the sort of flocks I remember: and even this local flock used to have 7 members.
The effect as birds appear from and vanish into the gloom is rather of one of those popular tales physicists tell to try to make the public feel they understand what nuclear physics is all about: particles and antiparticles are ceaselessly created by the vacuum, and as continuously meet each other and annihilate, returning to their matrix, the apparently endlessly creative fog, which one would otherwise have mistaken for chilly nothingness.
It was a lovely sunny walk today, spring in everything but temperature, in a fresh Northerly wind.
I was greeted at Wraysbury Lakes by a jumble of music, a loud and vigorous Garden Warbler competing with an even louder Song Thrush to pour out rich fluty notes in a confusing stream.
Suddenly the air is full of rising Mayflies with their long triple tails. The masses of Comfrey and Nettles are dotted with the iridescent blue of Banded Demoiselles, like slender dragonflies, and the clear green of the females. Also quite a few Azure Damselflies, the males brilliant blue with little cup markings at the base of their abdomens (Segment 2), the females green with little ‘Mercury’ markings in the same place. I think I saw a slender Sawfly, too; and quite a few bumblebees visiting the Comfrey. Just two butterflies, a Speckled Wood and a battered Red Admiral.
Canada Goose with Goslings
On the lake, a pair of Canada Geese watchfully escorting their fluffy line of chicks.
Further along, Blackcap, Robin, Blackbird; then a patch of Chiffchaffs; more Garden Warblers, then a few Whitethroats, making extraordinary wheezing and squeaking anxiety calls, and one in song flight; a little flock of Goldfinches; a few Willow Warblers, deep in the scrub, my first of the year. The May blossom is on time, the Hawthorns heavy with their white dresses. In clearings, Bugle, Forget-me-nots and Cowslips; a Red Campion.
In the sky, a Kestrel; a dozen Jackdaws; a Heron and a Cormorant; more surprisingly, a pair of Shelduck, rather big, rather white, with black wingtips and a brickred band across their chests. Four Swifts wheel past, race low over the hill.
Among the mares with their foals, a dozen Starlings making their rasping calls, feeding their newly-fledged young on the ground in the open or watching from the bushes; a French (Red-Legged) Partridge running rather than flying; a hen Pheasant flying in, her broad wings heavily loaded like the wide-bodied jets that roar overhead.
It’s utterly different from the heat earlier in the week, when I was down in Wiltshire, watching a Kingfisher flash along the river in Bradford-on-Avon, a Heron stalking fish in the shallows, a Horseshoe Bat among the bushes at dusk.
Prime Garden Warbler Habitat at Watlington Hill, with Gorse, Blackthorn and Wild Cherry in bloom
The weather forecast said fine and warm, getting warmer each day. The chalk downs called, so I popped out to Watlington Hill to enjoy the spring sunshine and the birdsong. I wasn’t disappointed: I’ve never SEEN so many Garden Warblers, and I mean seen. Their full, rich warble came from every patch of scrub, sometimes two or three singing at once, and the still mainly leafless trees (the buds just broken) make them visible for once. In binoculars, they are almost evenly soft mouse-brown all over, slightly paler below for countershading, with the merest hint of a little half-collar of pale grey. Sylvia borin has been called “Sylvia boring” by birders, and it’s a good mnemonic, if not much of a joke. They don’t have the Whitethroat’s white throat or patterned tertials; they don’t have the Blackcap’s black cap, or even the Chiffchaff’s eyestripe. All negative descriptions: but their song is both lovely and readily recognisable.
Also singing were Chiffchaff and Blackcap, both in numbers; Blackbird, Mistle Thrush (conspicuously perched atop their respective trees, and calling loudly and ringingly to each other); Dunnock, Great Tit, Blue Tit, Robin, Chaffinch, Wren. From the woods, Jays screeched; a Pheasant called in the distance; a few Swallows caught flies overhead; Buzzard, Stock Dove, Wood Pigeon, Magpie, Jackdaw, and Carrion Crow were about.
The hill is on the west-facing scarp of the chalk (Cretaceous, obviously) of the Chilterns, dropping down to the Oxford Clay plain which stretches away to Didcot and Oxford in the haze. The chalk grass is closely cropped by rabbits, but constantly invaded by hawthorn, blackthorn, whitebeam and bramble scrub.
Dog Lichen, Peltigera canina, in chalk grassland, with rabbit dropping for scale
I was pleased to see some patches of the Dog Lichen in the low turf.
The shadow of a Red Kite passed over the grass, and I looked up. A pair of the long-winged, fork-tailed raptors drifted over the hill, swivelling their tails, their bodies perfectly streamlined and front-weighted like gliders.
Brimstone female
As it warmed up, a Brimstone butterfly appeared, perching on the ground to absorb some heat from the sun. It is one of the most leaf-like of our butterflies, which would suggest camouflage: but they are conspicuous even with closed wings. Perhaps birds see them differently from us.
The English seem unemotional … except for their passion for nature
