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
Yes, a shepherd in London. Mid-March is lambing time, and she was out with her Land-Rover on the wide grassy banks of the reservoirs at Wraysbury, just beyond the end of the runways at Heathrow, checking that the new lambs were healthy. The ewe looks as though she’d like a rest, unsurprisingly. The grassy banks are quite steep, and mowing them would be costly and dangerous; how enlightened of Thames Water to use sheep instead. Genuinely “green”.
Also on the walk, several Brimstone butterflies, and a couple of Peacock butterflies (presumably overwintered in a hollow tree or some such place). Near the sheep were two Buzzards and a Red Kite, on the lookout for some carrion, I won’t mention what they were hoping to find. Also about was an early Chiffchaff singing its simple song (its name, over and over), a Cetti’s Warbler, and a Song Thrush. And a flock of Goldfinches finishing up the last of last year’s seeds in a big patch of thistles, burdocks, and teasels.
A Kestrel hovered persistently in the steady breeze, starting above treetop height and dropping lower in little steps, over the rough grass full of thistles, burdock, and teasels
Comfrey, once used as a medicinal herb to knit bones, still in flower in October. A solitary Chiffchaff sang its simple song nearby.
Germander Speedwell, a miniature beauty in bloom
Creeping Cinquefoil, an attractively bright flower in clusters among the well-trodden grass of the path
The extraordinary pink of the fruit of the Spindle Tree, a small slender tree with long and extremely straight twigs, that were ideal for medieval spinsters to use as spindles when spinning thread
Scentless Mayweed, a cheerful flower of waste ground, common in the pony field. A twittering flock of Linnets flew into a bramble patch in the field, perching atop the bush and making little flights, apparently catching insects, before returning to their perches.
A quiet sunny day in October – probably no migrants or winter ducks – perhaps it’ll just be a peaceful walk in the fresh air. Not a bad thing.
One of several Migrant Hawkers … the only one that obligingly perched for the camera
Among the brambles, a dragonfly flashed past; then another, patrolling up and down, inspecting a third one perched stock-still. They were small Hawkers, slim and with a lot of blue, and yes, they were definitely Migrant Hawkers, small Aeshnids that fly pretty late in the year. The patroller saw off a couple of bees or wasps: that’s quite aggressive, given that those insects can deliver a sting fatal to other insects.
Something hopping about in a Willow down by the water caught my eye, so I raised my binoculars, and was at once rewarded by an excellent view of a Chiffchaff, which helpfully called “Hweet” repeatedly to identify itself from the similar-looking Willow Warbler (not specially found in Willows), which says “Hoo-eeet” a bit more disyllabically. I had time to admire its bold eye-stripe before it disappeared into the foliage.
A few minutes further, a REALLY LOUD high-pitched chattering, — such a big sound that it hurt my ears. On a branch above the lake was silhouetted a small bird with a long heavy beak – it had to be a Kingfisher. At that moment, another Kingfisher flew up, hovered for a moment, chattering, and both birds raced off. Well!
Something heavy splashed into the water, leaving ripples. I peered through the branches. A Cormorant took off with noise and effort; another; and three more. A Little Egret joined them, white with short rounded wings and long conspicuous primary flight feathers spread out individually like fingers.
Hawthorn heavy with berries
The path past the fishing lake was flooded after the recent storm, from its bone-dry state all summer.
The Hawthorns were glowing a rich red, heavy with berries. Soon the winter thrushes, Redwings and Fieldfares, will arrive and feast on them.
Rabbit Latrine
I looked down. In the middle of the track, an enormous latrine — for Rabbits. Hundreds of little round pellets of differing ages, some fresh, many dry and crumbly (I didn’t try to rub them) formed a miniature cobbled pavement. Did you know that Rabbits always used the same toilet? Now you do. Perhaps it help to avoid giving information to predators like the Red Fox about where the Rabbits are today, so the extra effort of, er, going to the toilet pays for itself in increased safety.
In the horse field, this year’s foals were still staying close by their mothers, who went on grazing unconcernedly; a foal eyed me nervously as I went by.
At the Solar Farm, a small tractor whirred up and down, cutting the grass. Seems a shame that they can’t follow the excellent lead of Thames Water, who use a flock of Sheep to keep the grass short around their reservoirs the other side of the railway line. Still, it’s clean green energy, for the most part.
Just a quiet autumn walk on a sunny day. Nothing remarkable to report.
The presenters on Radio 4’s PM programme said that we needed an Awesome Nature Walk to lift our spirits during this renewed Covid Lockdown. Happily, we had already planned to go on one, and here it is: an Awesome Nature Walk at Wraysbury Lakes.
Sketch Map of the walk as it feels when I’m on the path (rather than mere cartographic accuracy, whatever that is)
The walk begins near the road bridge over the Colne Brook at the bottom of the map, which is by a repair garage. I’ve drawn the sketch map to give something of the feeling of the route while I’m walking it, rather than attempting to make an objective map.
The Area’s Natural and Unnatural History
The area is just outside the M25 ring motorway that informally defines London’s boundary; Heathrow Airport is just inside that, so in normal times (hmm) there is a plane overhead every 90 seconds. Down on the ground, there are numerous lakes which all started life as gravel pits. The River Thames laid down great amounts of sand and gravel in its wide flood plain during the Pleistocene, and the various Flood Gravels now form valuable building materials. Extraction round here has finished, but there are active pits a bit further afield. The pits go below the water table so they fill up by themselves. The large Reservoir is a bit different – it has an enormous high earth bank all around it, so the water level is high above the surrounding ground level (maybe there was gravel extraction there too before the Reservoir was built). A railway runs across the area; it can be crossed at a pedestrian level crossing with a pair of stiles and a lot of looking both ways. To the south of the lakes is an attractive area of thorn scrub with Hawthorn, Dog Rose, Spindle, Bramble and suchlike, with quite a few trees, all very good for wildlife. Down by the lake edges and the Colne Brook are many large Willows and Poplars which grow quickly, lean over, fall, and sprout up anew, forming a constantly-changing cycle of growth and regeneration, and providing cover and roosting-sites for warblers and water-birds.
The lakes have variously been repurposed – one is used by the sailing club, though I more often hear the clatter of rigging vibrating against sail-less masts on windy days than people actually sailing. Another is a strictly private fishing lake, protected by fierce signs and fiercer fences which must have cost a fortune to put up. The lake by the start of the walk is open to wildlife and fishing is forbidden; a delightful trio of icons make it clear that running with a large carp under your arm is forbidden, as is spear-fishing (or is that a black line crossing out a standing fisherman diagonally); frying fish on a griddle is not allowed, though nothing is said about making fish stew in a saucepan, interpret the icon how you will.
South of the scrubland is a pleasantly scruffy pony-field with scattered thorn-bushes and rough grass dotted with tufts of Alfalfa. It rises to a low hill which was once a municipal landfill dump. For some years the dump was grassed over and the ponies roamed all over it; then men came and installed deep pipes to sample and carry away the presumably polluted groundwater; finally, a sizeable array of solar panels was installed and fenced off, complete with security cameras, so ponies and walkers had to make a detour around the array.
So — airport, motorway, gravel-pits, railway, landfill, post-industrial leisure activities, it’s pretty much the classic Urban or Peri-Urban nature area.
The Walk
The bridge over the Colne Brook offers a glimpse of calm nature; the water babbles softly among the waterweeds, and two Kingfishers dark on triangular wings just above the surface. One swerves into a U-turn, catching the sun to reveal its brilliant blue-and-turquoise plumage. What a moment to start a walk.
We dive gratefully down the few steps from the pavement to the path: the pavement by the bridge is half-occluded by unclipped bushes, and the traffic whizzes past perilously close to unwary walkers.
In the sudden quiet we peer through the trees to the lake. A gang of twenty Cormorants is on the water, with a group of Mute Swans.
The path is bordered with Willows and coarse herbs; a patch of colourful Comfrey, once used to help knit broken bones, attracts some Common Blue Damselflies. At a gap in the Willows, a Cetti’s Warbler sings its abrupt, loud song. Some Migrant Hawker Dragonflies scoot too and fro beside the water, their transparent wings whirring, their long slender bodies glittering blue.
Little Egrets, Grey Herons, and Cormorants roosting and preening in the Willows beside the lake: not bad for an Urban Nature Walk
We come to a patch of reeds where we can see right across the lake. A Chiffchaff flits between bushes. On the far side is a bank of Willows, several with protruding dead branches. Perched on these are a few Grey Herons, half-a-dozen Cormorants, and most excitingly three Little Egrets — small white herons with black legs and yellow feet: uncommon visitors here. All of these are predators, feeding on fish and small animals like frogs; the Cormorants fish by diving from the surface, while the herons stand by or in the water, looking out for prey.
The track through the thorny scrub is bright with Rose and Hawthorn fruits — “Hips and Haws” in the fine old country phrase, rich with double entendre, glowing in different shades of red. Across a wide patch of Teasels and Burdocks and Thistles, all tall and prickly in their differing ways, more Hawthorn bushes are still in green leaf but bursting with red fruits, so they are red and green at once, which you might have thought impossible, but there it is, spectacular.
We swing through the kissing-gate and into the pony-field. The animals barely glance at us, the rich grass is clearly far more interesting. “Alfalfa” apparently means “King of Herbs” in Arabic; it was supposedly the finest pasture for grazing animals from goats to camels.
The path rounds the Solar Array; I guess it’s good to know that more and more of our energy is renewable, even if an Electric Vehicle, with its large price-tag, doubtful driving range, and complicated charging arrangements if like me and many city-dwellers, you don’t have a front drive to park and charge it on, is still perhaps a bridge too far. It does feel as if, with one more push, there could be charging points everywhere and affordable prices, and suddenly it’ll look not exotic but obvious. Five years, maybe? Who knows, but at least it’s coming.
Corona-virus is reaching every part of all our lives. Last week I made my final box of stobs like overgrown willow-pencils, along with a fine pile of woodchips, before Gunnersbury Triangle volunteering was shut down. It was a happy workday with relaxed chat about everything from knitting to frogspawn.
Today I went for a solitary walk around, keeping a good 2 metres from passers-by.
A Chiffchaff sweetly sang its simple song (its name, many times over), hopping about the still mainly-bare Willows and Birches, and feeding on the newly-leafed bushes of rose and hawthorn. Early spring is the best time to glimpse our warblers, which are small, slim, greeny-brown and very difficult to spot when all the trees are in full leaf. This one gave me a front seat in the stalls, singing in full view.
A brilliant yellow Brimstone butterfly, my first of the year, fluttered about the brambles, reflecting the warm spring sunshine, its wings slightly pointed in the middle (in the manner of Elf-ears, if you take my meaning).
A gloriously orange Comma butterfly, also the first for this year, shot past me and then landed near my feet to take the sun, its markings wonderfully fresh.
On the way home, my Dentist phoned to cancel the last remaining appointment in my diary. Let’s hope people will respect the rules so we can all continue to go out quietly and at least enjoy Nature.
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.
LWT Intern Trainee learning to sharpen an Austrian Scythe. We mowed the Acid Grassland along the track of the old railway.
The first day of spring, and a Chiffchaff was singing down in the reserve. The hawthorn hedge, laid last year, is springing up into fresh green and thickening up nicely.
A Red-Tailed Bumblebee groggily clambered aboutA Red (“Spider”) Mite crawled briskly about on a Willow stump. Handsome Hoverfly
The English seem unemotional … except for their passion for nature
