Tag Archives: Bugle

Contrasting May Landscapes at Wraysbury Lakes

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 lake
Ring-necked Parakeet in its nest hole
Move 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, Bugle
Daisy lawn, Whitethroat scrub habitat
Mute 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.

A Five-Warbler Walk at Wraysbury Lakes

A heraldic pair of Greylag Geese

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
Bugle in flower in the woods
A Whitethroat on his singing perch