Warley Place

Well, after several minutes subjecting the 'pootah to all manner of expletives while trying to restore my google account to life, I think I may as well post on the damn thing. I've spent an enjoyable afternoon wandering round the lovely Essex Wildlife Trust reserve at Warley Place with the Matriarch, and Warley Place seems as good a place to start blogging as any. It's covered in crocuses and snowdrops, and as we walked up the trail as the sunshine faded to grey clouds, I enjoyed pointing my camera at the floral displays there. A single bird of prey, I assume it to be a buzzard, past low over our heads, and we found ourselves staring at a difficult back view as it flew low over the adjoining farmland. The woodland is beginning to come to life as we stand on the cusp of a new season. The great tits were on full and typically repetitive song, and familiar but charming long-tailed tits fluttered about in the trees above us. We wandered on and found a goldcrest in a rhododendron near the walled garden. Goldcrests are fantastic birds to watch, constantly moving, flitting between buds and pecking at them, little avian mice, their apparant energy dictated by the demands of a tiny body and a fast metabolism. They have big, dark eyes, and look at you head on, with mild concern, before continuing with their urgent quest for small insects to eat. A yellow badger stripe runs down their foreheads. One afforded us better views as it alighted in a bare tree, not pausing for more than a second or two. Not uncommon but a charmer, and the smallest bird one regularly sees in these parts. I swifty passed the binoculars to mumsy so she could have a look at the charming avian mouse, as more long-tailed tits flew past us.
The common birds were in evidence, with chaffinches and robins offering us their chorus, and the gutteral, dinosaur-like squawks of a Jay made us stop and look up, as we approached the bank which, come April, will be covered in a sea of bluebells. The pretty corvid with the blood-curdling voice flew over us among the oaks. In the trees I spotted something small, a little bigger than a sparrow, clinging to a heavy bough. It was a species which Warley Place seems particularly good for, the Nuthatch. Nuthatches aren't rare, but they are not common in suburban South Essex either. Their smart uniform of blue grey over rusty pale makes them one of the most attractive, to my mind, denziens of the woodland canopy. It is birds like this which make such sites so special.
At the North hide we watched a few great and blue tits hanging on the peanut feeders and doing their thing, until a furry interloper, a grey squirrel, furtively walked up and after a few cautious glances around, climbed up the pole with the feeder mounted on it and chased everything off. A nyger seed feeder had been ripped open, presumably by this very beast, or at least one of its comrades, proving that the seeds, said to appeal to goldfinches but in my garden attracting absolutely nothing, are eaten by at least one woodland creature.
As the sun set we looked between the ancient oaks and down on a view from which we could see Canary Wharf tower and the Shard, monstrosities making it impossible to escape the sense of place, and the fact that we remained within the urban fringe.
It was an ordinary, sunny afternoon, and we hadn't seen any rare birds, but nontheless it was pleasant to be out among nature, walking through the crumbled remains of the old stately home and its gardens which once occupied the site, before the trees and the birds took back what was theirs.
And it was the visit to start a blog with. So there you go.