I have never known Wanstead so dry. As is quite normal I avoided the patch for the entire month of June, but this year the apathy extended well into July and I did not make my first visit until the 26th. It was so poor that I put local birding on hold for what turned out to be virtually a whole month and did not return to the patch until late August. During this period no rain fell. When I finally ventured out again it was cataclysmic.
Visually it is brown and beige, parched and dusty. But for me it is the smell that really stands out. It smells dead. Burned and broken. There is actually - miraculously - very little fire damage, we have had a lot worse, but it smells in a way I find difficult to describe. Dessicated, hollow, a shadow.
The ponds are the worst bit. Alexandra Lake has for years been losing water, but 2026 is a real low. Literally. A Mallard could walk to the island at this point, there is so little water. And as the water has receded so the true nature of Alex has been revealed - a grim litany of the presence and lack of care of people. Of us. Personally I have not dropped any litter, but there is nothing like a drought to expose the fecklessness of humankind. The mud is not a nutricious mud, it holds little attraction to birds of any kind, it is just a landscape of exposed detritus and it has never looked more disgusting than it looks now. I couldn't even bring myself to photograph it, you will just have to imagine it.Visaully it looks like autumn. Trees and bushes have dried up, leaves have been prematurely discarded, some may be dead. It is tragic. Bushes that in a normal year have had a good crop of berries either have a few hard and miniscule fruits or have nothing. Insects seem to have largely disappeared and combined with the lack of fruit the bird activity is low. Warblers are very scarce indeed, one or two Blackcap where in a normal year you would expect double figures.
Is this the new normal? I lost count of the number of heatwaves there were. Five I think, prolonged periods of over 30 degrees. At times it felt like London was uninhabitable. The speed with which this change has come about is unthinkable. Predicted by a few, ignored by many, this would seem to be the future. Awful. My parents, unwittingly, avoided it by moving to Scotland. I spent a week up there recently and it was a blessed relief. For all the years of jokes about Scottish weather it now appears that people travel up there for it, how about that for a turnaround. The diehard low-carbon brigade are doubtless crowing, but this path was set long before they even existed. It might have happened earlier than had been anticipated, but this was always going to be the result of decades of accelerated and uninhibited growth. When my children are my age what will it be like? All we can do at this stage is make the best of it and if that sounds defeatist it is. No answers, the collective will isn't there, will never be there. Too selfish. But frankly what used to happen elsewhere is now happening here. Will that change anything? I doubt it. This summer has had me doubting whether living in London is a viable future for us, the city is emminently unsuited to it. I'm looking north at this point I think, I suspect many are. At least I have somewhere to go.
