Among the wonderful moments on this walk: a heron gave its cronking call and flapped slow over the water; a plane passed behind three cormorants drying their wings, perched on the branches of a dead tree; a group of goldeneyes panicked and pattered across the lake, gaining speed for takeoff, giving their high-pitched call, the waves sparkling in the slanting sunshine; a song thrush tentatively singing its repeated music; a solitary fieldfare.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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 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.
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.
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.
A six-warbler walk … one of the delights of May.
Indian Summer days are delightful, but often not terribly rich in visible wildlife – this year’s young have fledged and left the nest; flowers have faded and gone into fruit (which can be beautiful, of course); butterflies and dragonflies have mostly stopped flying; summer birds have left for Africa; and the warm calm air doesn’t bring winter migrants from the frozen North.
But there was plenty to listen to this morning.
As I walked in off the road, a Heron took off behind the bushes, and gave a two-tone ‘cronk’ note as it flapped off over the lake. I peered through a gap, and there it was, its amazingly broad angled wings like an ingeniously light balsa wood and doped muslin flying machine, totally unlike the awkward folded umbrella of an ungainly bird that a Heron is when perched.
Two Mute Swans took off and flew low over the water right in front of me, as silent as their name: only their wings whistling with each heavy wingbeat.
A solitary Cormorant took off from the water, very black without the white breeding season thigh patches, also silent except for the heavy thwack of its feet slapping the water on the first ten wingbeats.
A Cetti’s Warbler, invisible in the waterside bushes as always, burst into its loud rude song. (Once you’ve read Barnes’s description of just how rude that is, in How to Be a Bad Birdwatcher, you’ll never hear a Cetti’s without smiling again, I promise.)
A Green Woodpecker gave its cheerful triple signature call, somewhere far out of sight. No need to look.
A few Long-Tailed Tits called anxiously to each other, ‘Tsirrup’, high in the willows. I couldn’t see them either, and again, I didn’t mind a bit.
Bizarrely (and this was a sight to behold, perhaps the only one of the walk), 4 Cormorants took to the air, seeming to be chasing 4 young Herons, presumably a family party.
Up on the horses’ hill, a Kestrel hovered silently on whirring wings.
The horses won’t be there much longer: Affinity Water have put up little notices To Whom It May Concern, saying they’ve had enough with ‘flygrazing’ (makes a change from flytipping, presumably) and will remove the horses if they’re not taken away. I suppose the gypsies have left them to breed as well as graze for free (there’s plenty of grass); the horses are always gentle, and do a good job of controlling the meadow, actually. Why would they do that, a friend wondered. I suggested that it made perfect sense – each year, the ‘owners’ could drop in, take a mare, and leave the others to keep up the supply of new horses. What an economical, ecological system. Without the horses, I guess someone will have to pay for mowing, or maybe they’ll hire a flock of sheep for a few weeks each year? Not sure the horses aren’t a better solution. Of course they could leave some goats to go feral. (Only kidding.)
“Cast ne’er a clout till May be out”, runs an old proverb. I guess it means, don’t trust the appearance of spring and sunshine in March or April: I recall two other spring proverbs, “March winds, April showers”, and “One Swallow doesn’t make a Summer”. In other words, spring arrives in fits and starts.
Well, it felt almost like spring at Wraysbury Lakes, with bursts of bright sunshine. A rather bold Cormorant investigated the fish in the river from a low perch. Many Willows have fallen and been cut down: they grow very rapidly, soon become hollow or outgrow their roots in the soft ground, and snap in a storm or topple — across the path, or into the water.
A Cetti’s Warbler gave me a single burst of its loud song from a waterside bush: as usual it was invisible.
Three or four Chiffchaffs chorused uncertainly. There were no other warblers to be heard. Perhaps I’ll get a Six Warbler Walk in a few weeks’ time. The early songsters remain the Song Thrush, the Great Tit and of course that 12-month, 24-hour standby, the Robin.
A Magpie chattered on the woodland edge of Horse Hill: a big brown Buzzard flapped slowly away from the annoyance to perch in a tree.
Bornholm is in some ways as Britain was half a century ago or more: there are still swathes of cornflowers and poppies, though many of the fields are plainly weed-free except for narrow margins. The sky over arable fields and set-aside is loud with the song of skylarks; the hedges are full of the cheerful little-bit-of-bread-and-no-CHEESE song of yellowhammers. Swallows race in numbers low over the corn; the towns are busy with house sparrows, swifts and house martins, the many handsome old houses and churches offering plentiful nesting places to suit all parties. The woods held good numbers of blackcap, with willow warblers in the more open areas, a chiffchaff or two, plenty of whitethroats in scattered bushes, a garden warbler or two.
Some things are simply modern, despite the unspoiled rural look of the island: butterflies seem to be few – red admirals, speckled woods, peacocks, small tortoiseshells, meadow browns, and what I think was a fritillary over a marsh-fringed lake – it was quite big and fairly pale, roughly like a dark green: perhaps it was a marsh fritillary, but I couldn’t stay to find out. It was somewhat windy all week, so perhaps there are many more species on windless days, but I rather doubt it (and wind does seem rather usual on the island).
Of course in many ways it is quite different. The presence of eider ducks and goosanders in numbers on the (brackish) Baltic Sea, along with the occasional mute swan and mallard (and a less surprising shelduck), is strikingly unfamiliar. The crows, as in Scotland, are a reminder that this is the North: handsome grey-mantled hooded crows instead of their all-black carrion crow cousins; and there are rooks in numbers all over, including in the villages, boldly scavenging.
Yet another astonishingly warm day, not exactly Indian Summer now with a cloudy start, but too hot for more than a t-shirt by midday. The Wraysbury Lakes were quiet, the winter ducks represented only by a few shoveler and a couple of gadwall. The most impressive waterbirds were the cormorants roosting on the dead branches of a large willow.
On the path I found a single muntjac deer footprint, with its tiny pellets. A few goldfinches twittered in the bushes, and a linnet. A buzzard circled over the hills in the distance.
The sun is shining … in between the showers. Mayflies are resting all over the plants near the river. May blossom makes a bright show on every hawthorn bush. Yes, it’s May down at Wraysbury Lakes. The energetic breeze gives a cool feel, but out of the wind it’s very pleasant. Enjoying the brisk airflow are at least four Common Terns over the lakes and overhead; a few Swallows; and a small number of Swifts, newly arrived in the last few days, racing down to the water surface to catch flies — not the mayflies, which are active mainly at night. The warblers which are definitely about are hard to hear for the wind in the trees, but I caught snatches of Chiffchaff, Blackcap, many Whitethroats, plenty of Garden Warbler, a Willow Warbler, three Song Thrushes and a Blackbird, not to mention Robins and Wrens. A Cormorant lumbered past, climbing with effort, its jizz very much like that of the Boeing 747s lumbering heavily into the air.
There are some pale mayflies, with neither antennae nor the 3 tails: maybe these have broken off in the vegetation.
Also new today are quantities of damselflies: there are many brilliant iridescent blue male Banded Demoiselles, with their beautifully clear green-bronze females. This one seemed definitely to be watching me attentively. Two small blue species have also emerged, Blue-Tailed Damselfly and Common Blue Damselfly.
Over the lake, a long-winged falcon swooped at speed: I wondered for a moment if I had a Cuckoo, but the moustache and white face markings showed it was a Hobby, arrived from Africa in pursuit of the Swifts, and perhaps hunting damselflies as easier prey in this place. The low number of Swifts is worrying; they have been declining for years, as building renovation removes their old nest-holes, and increased human population pressure in Africa threatens them there too.
This small grasshopper, missing an antenna, is my first of the year.
Further along, the bare damp area that often has teasels is bright yellow with clumps of a yellow Brassica that has clasping leaves like wild turnip (or cultivated swede). There’s a definite cabbagey smell. A Whitethroat, caught out in the open, makes a dash for a bush.