The Dig

My name is Jonathan and I have a plant addiction. Many years ago I bought some small bamboo plants, and planted them in extremely large pots. They grew a bit, and then stopped. In fact I don't think they have changed noticeably in size in about ten years. Earlier this year, in about April, I took one out of its pot and planted it in a flower bed in the garden. Within about three months it had doubled in both size and height. This was when I read up about how large clumps of bamboo could get if left unchecked. Oh dear. Think my garden and my neighbour's garden becoming one giant clump of bamboo. You see, they stick out horizontal rhizomes - runners - that seek out new place to spring forth. My lawn, other peoples' lawns, lawns down the street...

There was nothing for it, I would have to install root barrier, and enclose the whole plant within an impenetrable circle of tough plastic membrane to a depth of 60cm. No problem. In fact, seeing as I am digging anyway, and seeing how well the unshackled bamboo is doing, why not make a much larger enclosure and plant another bamboo as well? No probs, one five metre long 60cm deep trench coming right up.

My son helped start it off, and dug three sides of it to a depth of about 30cm. This was probably quite hard, especially the bit next to the neighbour's fence, complete with tricky roots and a lump of fence post to work around, but he is 15 now and quite handy, and so it was that I came back from work one day towards the end of the summer holidays with quite a nice start made. No probs, I'll finish that off one evening.

Fast forward two weeks and I have barely made a dent. Meanwhile the grass under the tarpaulin was mostly dead and the garden looked like a building site. Time to get serious. Saturday was the day. 30 to 40cm was OK, just about. Then I hit London clay and it became impossible. The final 20cm, a narrower trench dug with a trowel at the bottom of the 40cm spade-width excavation took a grand total of 10 hours of hard labour, and two days later I am a shadow of my former self. At one stage Mrs L rushed out worrying that I had died, but actually I was just lying down having a rest whilst feebly scratching at the soil.

I finished at about 7pm having toiled all day. Needless to say I have not done anything as physically hard as this for, oh, ever. Anyway, it is done, but I felt about 75 years old as I wobbled to work this morning on legs that could barely stand and with only one functioning arm. Let's just hope it works, and the bamboo isn't some super variety that will just drill straight through the barrier and onwards to Wanstead Flats. A final bit of tidying up and filling in the giant hole where it settled overnight and all I have left to do is to trim the top of the plastic barrier a little bit and perhaps lay out some mulch. Next spring should be cataclysmic!

A sudden rush of blood to the head

Another bad sleep, this time as a result not of excessive wine, but over-enthusiastic gardening. I have had a bamboo plant for over a decade in a large pot, and it has done almost nothing in all of that time. Finally this spring I planted it in the ground whereupon it exploded into growth, shooting up immensely tall culms at a rate of knots. Some cursory research showed that this was only the beginning, and that it would soon overtake Wanstead if left unchecked. So I spent Saturday digging a huge and very deep trench to bury some root barrier around it, and whilst I was at it planted another one. When you get to about 40cm you hit London clay, and the final 20cm are hellish. At one stage Mrs L rushed outside thinking it had killed me, but I was just lying on my stomach with my arm in the pit having a bit of a rest. It is done now, hopefully giving Wanstead a few years before the Pandas arrive en masse, but I have not worked so hard for ages and on Sunday I could barely move. 

I thought I would end up sleeping all day but for some reason I woke up at dawn. Pain I think. Anyway, a quick peruse of twitter and I saw that the Eastern Olivaceous Warbler was still at Farlington. I have spent the last few weeks smugly laughing at all those madmen dashing down to Cornwall multiple times to try and see a Brown Booby. Fools! Not for me. Once, granted, but I have grown up now and my twitching days are behind me. Well behind me.

Anyway, it took just over an hour and forty minutes to get down there and the bird showed immediately. It was extremely dude-y I have to say, and I rather let the side down by dressing in shorts and a Hawaiian shirt rather than regulation green and beige. Clearly not a serious twitcher. Talking of which I met Monkey there doing much the same as me, and we established that the last bird we had twitched was nearly two years ago, so actually I have done quite well. I didn't stick around for very long, it looked like it might get a bit crowded and I am not one for crowds these days. And so I was back home before lunch and thus managed to fit in a bit more gardening. Very slow gardening.

Not quite sure what came over me but it certainly made a change from my usual sedate Sunday mornings. Sometimes it is good to do something a little different. You won't find me screaming down to Cornwall any time soon, nor up to Shetland, both of which have been known in the past, but this one was well within range and took less than a morning. And as you can see below, it was a glorious feast of colour.

Wanstead at dawn

I had a very bad sleep on Friday night, probably as a result of the first booze all week Mrs L and I agreed - we are trying to be good. Still, it meant I was out on the patch extremely early and able to enjoy the rising sun. It is at its most beautiful at this time of day, you can't see the rubbish. Alexandra Lake was particularly grim, and is losing water rapidly. Soon it will become the cesspit it has always threatened to be - hopefully Waders will find this more attractive than I do. Needless to say there weren't any, although the Greenshank endures on Heronry for some reason. Best birds were a pair of Stonechat fresh in, the first of the autumn, but mainly the morning was notable for a large clear out of the week's earlier migrants, and between us we couldn't dig out a great deal.

  

The Buses in Wanstead are Green

I've lived in Wanstead for nearly fifteen years. My wader list after last year's Black-tailed Godwit, was fourteen, neatly mirroring my time here at that point. Now in my fifteenth year it is only right that I add another wader to my patch list, and so late last week I did exactly that - Greenshank. One was found by Simon and Nick on the deck on Heronry, and even more remarkably was still present when I and the rest of the patch stalwarts got to it after work. It was still there the following morning, and mind-blowingly was also still there on Saturday morning. I toddled over to see it with Tony, noted that it was favouring a narrow channel on the south side and was thus relatively close, toddled back home to fetch the largest camera I could find, and then toddled back to Heronry and papped it. 

Thus.

The bird was flushed by a water-borne dog and flew east calling, but dropped back in a couple of minutes later. Deciding I'd got as good as I was going to get, I got up to leave and had not walked more than about a hundred yards when Nick sent a message to say he had seen a white-bellied wader flying east over the SSSI. Those of you that know that patch will know that the next bit of water a wader will see on that vector is the Shoulder of Mutton Pond, followed by Heronry, where I just been. I was under trees and had no sky, but it had to be worth a look so I retraced my steps and went to the north side of Heronry where I could see the biggest expanse of water. Scanning the southern edge I nearly dropped my binoculars - there were TWO Greenshank sat side by side in the shallows. After a while they both got up, and calling loudly flew over my head and disappeared over the golf course. Mouth agape, camera uselessly on the ground, I followed them through the bins getting glorious views as they flew against a charcoal grey sky and were lost to view. 

Greedily I went back to the southern channel just to check that the original bird wasn't there, that would have been quite ridiculous. It wasn't, but nonetheless what are the chances? That said I remember when two Golden Plover on Wanstead Flats were joined by a third overnight, so there is at least some precedent but still, it is just extraordinary when you think about it. The photograph of the two together is not very good as I was on the other side of the pond, but it doesn't matter as I doubt this will ever occur again.

Trashing the patch

Trashing. Not thrashing. My guess is that given it is autumn and that Wanstead is drowning in migrants that some of you may have misread the title, and were perhaps expecting another birdy post? No. Trashing. From the verb to trash - to damage or destroy something, either deliberately or because you did not take good care of it. Migrants are not the only thing we are drowning in. I am talking about litter and people's waste. Wanstead is slowly but surely being ruined by selfless littering and tipping.

I don't litter, my children don't litter. I would never dream of dropping something on the ground, the mere thought of it is completely foreign to me. I view littering as one of the lowest things somebody can do, as it just so avoidable. There are bins everywhere, recycling facilities in London abound. How hard can it be to find a bin or take your rubbish home with you? Not hard at all, so when people just chuck whatever it is - normally food and drink containers - on the ground and saunter off, well it just makes my blood boil. I know I am sounding a bit like 'outraged of Tunbridge Wells' here, but it has got to the point where it is an epidemic. 

As well as a few migrants around the patch last week, here is a flavour of what else a visiting birder might have seen.

Nice eh? Almost every corner of the patch that you walk through has something similar. Under bushes and around tree trunks are the most popular spots, although the sides of the lake are also pretty grim. It would be a lot worse were it not for the heroic action of a local volunteer who walks around the patch almost every morning pulling a trolley and picking it all up. He fills several bags a day but cannot keep up with the sheer volume of crap dropped by the selfish and oafish users of the Flats.

Up there with littering is fly-tipping. The Flats sees a lot of this, most often when the fun fair is in town, although there is no direct correlation. Possibly it is because there are more gates open during these periods to allow access, possibly it is because less scrupulous ride operators do a bit of house clearance work on the side. I have nothing but flimsy circumstantial evidence for this of course and I am probably being discriminatory.

All I can say is it becomes a lot easier to become discriminatory and cast aspersions when you step out onto your patch and see this.

And this.

Lovely. Who exactly do the dumpers of this stuff think is going to sort it out? The answer is that they don't care one jot. The physical answer is that it is the hard-working keepers of Epping Forest, who rather than manage the habitat have to instead pick up the contents of a lowlife's uninsured white Ford Transit. We regularly have to direct them to piles of rubbish that some callous arse has tipped out of a van, as if they don't have enough to do already. Prosecutions are rare, though they do sometimes manage to prove it and fine the person concerned - my favourite was someone who had fly-tipped a load of stuff in a massive cardboard box that had their name and address on it....

There is only one acceptable form of dropping something on the ground, and that is when the aim is to feed the birds. Yes, despite the rather ambiguous signage of "Don't feed the birds" around the various ponds on the patch, actually it is quite alright and perfectly acceptable to put a little extra out for our feathered friends. So many people have such little regard for wildlife that I have to say my heart gives a little flutter when I see such acts of human kindness. This is one of the truest expressions of a love of nature.

Look! So thoughtful.

Sneaking a few in

My patch dedication has been less than impressive this year, mirroring my blogging. I may have ‘phased’ in both. As previously mentioned I am not too bothered by this, and sure enough in the last few days something has begun to stir, and what started off as small forays to pick off migrants are turning into longer outings. I think I have timed this perfectly, particularly given all my other interests.

It began a week ago, last Friday, when in danger of missing the largest influx of migrant Tree Pipits any of us can remember for a long time, I snuck out on the patch early one misty morning and was rewarded instantly. There were three birds that day, and I saw either one, two or all of them, it is impossible to say. I also found a Whinchat, another year tick. I wasn’t able to then get out at the weekend, mainly by virtue of being in Belgium, but another quick raid on Bank Holiday Monday netted a Spotted Flycatcher and a Pied Flycatcher in under half an hour, as well as a Garden Warbler.  The following few days were dominated by Canary Wharf, but I managed to get away early on Wednesday and snuck in 5 Whinchat and a Common Redstart before it got dark. This really got the juices flowing and the following morning I walked across Wanstead Flats to Manor Park to catch the train rather than my usual tube from Leytonstone. During this really quite direct walk, which took a little over half an hour, I totted up 5 Whinchat (almost certainly the same birds as the previous evening), 3 Common Redstart, and 8 Northern Wheatear. To say I arrived at Canary Wharf with a spring in my step would be an understatement.

Which brings me to this morning, keener by the day, when I was out at 7am. With more time on my side I was able to linger for longer in the Enclosure. A Garden Warbler, a Reed Warbler, and two Common Redstart, one of which was an absolute belter of a male. Close by 4 Whinchat remained in the brooms, and a Hobby cruised overhead. Tomorrow is the weekend, I am in the country, I am not going to Cornwall/Brittany Booby-twitching, and I cannot wait!  

Bird Days.

A lot of the birds we have all seen this week are the same birds that have decided that Wanstead Flats is so nice that they are going to stay for a few days. This makes determining how many individuals we have seen very hard, so the best thing to do is to use the concept of bird days. We all understand that this multiplies the numbers, but it makes annual comparisons more straightforward. My totals are meagre, but the overall numbers for August are phenomenal.

Wheatear = 24

Whinchat = 55

Pied Flycatcher = 17

Spotted Flycatcher = 29

Common Redstart = 24

Tree Pipit = 39

So we all know that the Whinchat total is significantly boosted by a group of 4 or 5 birds that have hung around for nearly a whole week in a large patch of Willowherb south of Long Wood. Ditto the Common Redstart, the last few days have seen the same birds remaining in exactly the same spots around the patch. What can be quite illuminating however are the maximum counts, they at least prove unequivocally that we are getting some really rather good numbers, as opposed to a single bird hanging around for weeks on end.  So for example on one day, August 24^th, there were 6 Pied Flycatcher reported. On the 27^th there were 10 Whinchat, and on the 29^th 7 Common Redstart and at least 12 Wheatear. Birds obviously move around a patch during the day, and so this can be somewhat subjective, but we do try and take account of specific locations to assess the likelihood of duplication, and we don’t think this exaggerated. For example we would generally not expect birds near Alexandra Lake at the far eastern end of the patch to be the same birds that are recorded in the SSSi at the western end, though we acknowledge that it can happen. Best efforts really.

Still, I don’t know of another urban patch quite like it, and I am very lucky to have it on my doorstep.

Journal

As I mentioned in the last post, for the last ten years I've kept a travel journal. This started off life as a pure birding diary, a day by day blow of birds I'd seen along with meticulous lists. It still is, though its scope has expanded to also include pure travel. Not all travel, that would become a little tedious, so for instance a day trip to a european city is unlikely to feature. However some of my more far-flung trips get a mention, even if their primary goal is not birds or photography, such as Malaysia and Japan with Mrs L, or Utah and Arizona with Henry. Birds always feature however, however minimally - as a birder I can never properly switch off, there is always something that needs recording.

I use something called the Alwych, I think I picked it up from a Mark Cocker book on birding (Tales of a Tribe), and it has proved perfect. It fits nicely in my newfound jacket pockets, and is neatly lined, although I only use these as guides to try and keep vaguely straight. My handwriting is extremely small and I only get around 25 days holiday a year, so I'm actually only on my second one although this is now nearly full. I started it in 2014 and I don't think it will last much into 2020.

I used to be extremely diligent, writing it up every evening after a day's birding, but more recently I have lost my way, and for a whole year I didn't even pick it up. This became a significant niggle, and in May I put it on my to do list. It was a mammoth undertaking. Somehow I had to remember all the the trips I had been on since around August 2018, as well as all the birds I had seen. Luckily I had forseen my extreme laziness and had made various lists on scraps of paper which I had carefully retained, but actually placing myself back on my travels was a long and labourious process. Mostly I caught up on flights, airline lounges or hotel rooms - constantly irritated that I wanted to be writing the here and now rather than the past, but not wishing to mess up the chronology. I must never be so slack again. 

Earlier this month I finally finished - the last entry was my trip to Long Island. Since August 2018 I have filled 56 pages. I counted the words on a random page and there were 359, so it has taken me 20,00 words to catch up. No wonder it took a long time! Of course it is a lot slower after the event. I needed to remember what order I went to places, I had to consult maps, old blog posts and lists of flights, I needed to painstakingly transcribe bird lists onto the page and do the odd sketch. This was quite a fun process and a good test of my memory, but sometimes there would be a mental delay and I would find that after I had finished a day off and moved on to the next only then would I remember some funny incident I had witnessed, people I had talked too, other birds I had seen, what I had eaten or in some cases whole passages of the day that with the passing of time I had completely skipped and now there was no room in which to go back. In fact the last year of writings could be described as rather boring in the context of the rest of it. Writing it so far down the line is never going to be as rich as doing it whilst travelling. It felt rather forced, that I had lost the emotions of immediacy, of the present. My family would contend that the whole thing is boring! But this is not supposed to be a classic read, it is supposed to be a memory jogger, a record of the fun I have had. Nobody else really cares and nor should they, despite the length this is not my magnum opus, it is just another way to while away the many spare hours I have and no idea what to do with them.