Tag Archives: Ring-necked Parakeet

Natural History

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.

Environment, Love of Nature

Winter Thrushes in the Fog

With another day of freezing fog, very dangerous on the roads, nature is telling us that, yes, global warming or no, it’s winter. The false acacia, totally leafless, whirs with activity. A big wood pigeon sits impassively, ignoring the small passers-by. Within a few minutes, these include 3 goldfinches, keeping well away from each other in the branches; 2 male blackbirds, similarly, their heads high on the lookout for competitive activity; 4 ring-necked parakeets, never settling for more than a moment, jumping up squawking at the slightest provocation; 2 redwings, handsome with their contrasting eyestripes; 1 fieldfare, markedly bigger, and a handsome bird when seen in crisp winter sunshine rather than today’s murky fog. A few minutes later, a blackcap appeared: still a bird that we think of as a summer visitor, though a few pass through in winter from colder places. Later still, a great tit jumped in and wriggled about; and a little flock of 6 starlings blew in for a few minutes, sadly diminished from the sort of flocks I remember: and even this local flock used to have 7 members.

The effect as birds appear from and vanish into the gloom is rather of one of those popular tales physicists tell to try to make the public feel they understand what nuclear physics is all about: particles and antiparticles are ceaselessly created by the vacuum, and as continuously meet each other and annihilate, returning to their matrix, the apparently endlessly creative fog, which one would otherwise have mistaken for chilly nothingness.