Happy Wanderings

It has been a few days, and a few days of exciting weather at that! Wednesday saw Natty and I head off, by bicycle, via a blackthorn blossom-infested Ingrebourne Valley cycle path, towards the RSPB reserve at Purfleet. A breif stop at the valley revealed, in the wet area where the river spreads out, a few lingering Teal and Shoveller, as well as a grey heron, and birdsong everywhere. The familiar sound of early spring, the repetitious, squeaky wheelbarrow call of great tits dominated. The people, too, were out in force enjoying the unseasonal summer sun.

There was little to see along the river path, aside from more of the little white flowers, covering the blackthorns, and plenty of nice fat queen bumblebees, busying themselves on the blossom. Leaf burst on the hawthornes had started, causing the shrubby hedges planted to conceal the landfill and recycling site to appear a little more effective. The few Gorse bushes around the site were also in flower, as they seem to be almost continuously, "kissing is out of season when the furze is out of blossom" and all that. We hopefully kept our eyes open for spring migrants, but saw none. As we reached the RSPB site we caught sight of no less than two hunting Short Eared Owls, echoing the suggestion that these are particularly abundant this year. Large clusters of dancing flies hung on the warm summer air. The cusp of the changing season.

We were frustrated to find ourselves short of time when we arrived at Purfleet and the RSPB reserve, courtesy of the wire fenced fortress' ridiculously breif opening hours, so we hung about outside photographing a very co-operative Collared Dove and some starlings on the feeders in the wildlife garden outside the visitors centre, and the Royal Navy and Police aparantly on manoevers on the river. On the ride back we saw a few lovely linnet and a couple of Shelduck sitting nonchalently on a concrete structure. We reached Ingebourne Hill in time to see the red disc of the sun hanging over the grey smog before slipping behind the towers of the Isle of Dogs. We navigated along the ingrebourne valley back to Upminster in the dark. 

Chafford on Thursday was another sunny one, with plenty of butterflies. The Warren Gorge part of Chafford Gorges was host to several peacock, a small white and, unusually, a speckled wood. Warren is a remarkable place, part urban leisure park, part urban nature reserve. The new, red-brick Barrat Homes type developments cling, smart but uninspiring, to the top of a chalk cliff, which descends sharply into the water which seems to represent the edges of the site, except where the paths climb up out of the pit. It is sheltered, and in the sunshine, very warm. Aquatic weeds are burgeoning in the water, and the white blossom of blackthorn and the pink of spindle tree are everywhere, and the hawthorne was in leaf burst, making for strange contrasts with the wintry brown of the Phragmites in the margins. The water is crystal clear and shoals of Rudd, or some other silver sided fish, have begun to emerge from the depths where they spent the winter out of site. The bulk of the floor of the site consists of short sward, kept low by the attentions of grazing Geese. Regularly fed by visitors, the Geese are quite tame, and allowed for me to get very close and take photos of their feathers. Canada and greylag are present in noisy flocks, hissing and honking often, sometimes fleeing madly when a poorly controlled dog gives chase. On Thursday, it was full of young families out with their dogs. The mess the dogs leave, and the litter the people leave, is one of the sites few downsides, and litter picking is regular work for us volunteers there on the Thursday work party.

We saw a pair of Great Crested Grebes, having regained their summer headdresses, apparantly paired off for the season, and Gordon the Moorhen. A young swan seems to have joined the old male swan, known affectionately as The Swan. The swan is a widower, his partner having died, apparantly after ingesting fishing tackle, some years ago. Fishing is now prohibited at the reserve, because of such impacts on the wildlife. Another part of the wider complex is part managed by an angling club who maintain one of the lakes, and effectively prevents poaching. It was good to see two swans on the water again, although it was hard to tell the sex of the youngster, who might indeed turn out to be another male.

We took a walk down the recently reopened path by the visitor's centre, a dead end leading to a muddy promentary into the water. A number of dead trees create something of an alien, jungle-like effect, broken by the sight of houses behind them. A grass snake, my first reptile of the year and well out of hibernation, swam through the shallows, and the most brilliantly marked peacock butterfly, the purple in its forewing eyespots almost metallic and dayglow simultaneously paused to take in the sun on the compacted mud. As the sunlight shimmered on the water it felt like summer, and so far from the hell-in-a-greenhouse of the Lakeside shopping centre, just a stones throw away in another chalk pit closer to the river.