Heather's Nature Notes: LONDON WWT

Ring necked parakeets are something of a rarity in my home area; not so in parts of London, where I went to stay with some good friends recently. After a welcome cup of tea we popped out to a local wood, where we were met by the noisy squawks of these parrot like birds. It didn't take us long to spot one, or two, and up to twenty or more as we walked through amongst the trees. Most of them were flying noisily between the branches but one was carefully exploring a hole in one of the trees.

The following day we made our way to the WWT Centre at Barnes in the centre of London. Originally four concrete reservoirs it was transformed about twenty years ago into a wonderful wetland area; an oasis in the middle of the city. Our orignal plan was to visit on Saturday but with storm Dennis threatening, we decided to go on Friday instead, which turned out to be a wise choice as, despite a cloudy forecast, it was actually sunny for most of the time we were there.

Living in a rural area as I do, it was somewhat out of my comfort zone to drive through the streets of outer of London, but thankfully I had someone in the car to guide me. Just to compare, it took 50 minutes to go the 8 miles to the centre, whereas I take the same amount of time to drive the 40+ miles to my nearest WWT Centre at Slimbridge!

However once there, it was all peace and quiet as we headed in to the centre, apart from a group of four parakeets waiting in a tree by entrance!

We decided to start off by making our way though the paths on the west route and visit a couple of hides where bitterns have been seen. The discovery hide has previously provided some amazingly close views but not today, so we wandered through a wonderful 'wildside' area, seeing and hearing cettis warblers in the reeds, before reaching the Wildside Hide. We were informed that one bittern had been seen an hour earlier but not since, and although we waited for a while, it did not re-emerge. Meanwhile we watched a female Goldeneye swimming and diving, and found a yellow legged gull on one of the islands.

It was in this area that I suddenly spotted two jays perched on some railings. One flew off but the second remained long enough for me to grab some photos.

We returned to the Observatory to eat lunch overlooking the main lake, before taking the South route. The Peacock tower provided great views over the wetlands but we didn't add many more birds to our sightings list. We also spotted a family looking at a goldcrest flitting erratically about a hedge, providing some very close views, but not really long enough to focus my camera on!

Our visit was an enjoyable one, even though we didn't manage to see any bittern which are one of the main winter attractions there, and we also missed out on a water pipit. However we saw 46 species altogether which was a fantastic record for an inland wetland area I thought. I read afterwards that sometimes 180 species can be seen there throughout the year!