The noise from the traffic on the busy Marylebone Road was still thrumming in my ears as I strode up York Bridge towards the Inner Circle of Regent's Park. I was approaching the we created in partnership with The Royal Parks when I was stopped in my tracks. Here in the shadow of the BT Tower, was a jay, staring at me from the hedge.
Jays are suposedly elusive, shy birds of woodland. Yet here it was loud and proud.
Special moments are never really far away when you're in London. You may feel insulated from the countyrside, but the countryside has moved in to the Capital. My session in Bushy Park was a good reminder of this. Red deer chewed and calmly watched as I walked past them enroute to our trailer next to the Heron Pond. It was a wet and blustery day, so I didn't get to see many people. Lots of birds and dogs, but few people.
Monitoring of our house sparrow plots is proving quite enlightening. We've had the usual pigeons, crows and gulls recorded in the grass plots. but our nectar and seed rich plots are also attracting a range of finches, thrushes and tits alongside strange arrivals such as snipe. Over winter there won't be as much fieldwork, but the study continues with number crunching and identification of the thousands of insect samples collected over summer.
There's been lots of discussion surrounding sparrowhawks of late. People at events I've been to claim to be seeing more of them. They're right. Sparrowhawk numbers are now returning to levels not seen for years. It's great to see them. Last time sparrowhawks were really common, sparrow numbers were enormous. Since then, house and tree sparrow numbers have fallen, with London losing about two out of every three house sparrows.
Next weekend (5 Dec) we'll be marching to Westminster calling for more global action to address cliamte change. Come and join us at The Wave. Wear something blue, register on our special webpage and we'll ensure you've a blue prop to wave towards the Houses of Parliament as Big Ben strikes three. Size does matter. We need to show there is massive, humongous, nay mammoth public support to encourage politicians to go that extra mile when they meet with other leaders in Copenhagen. Please don't leave it to others to march. That jay, the sparrows, the deer, insects, plants, your fellow Londoners, Europeans and other world residents all deserve a future not blighted by our reliance on carbon or our indifference.
Join us Saturday in our sea of blue minnows, combining to create a blue whale of a day that could be the straw that breaks the back of the camel of climate change.
Cor blimey missus, look at the antlers on that!
Bushy Park in west London is where my partners Gran courted, and rumour has it, may well have conceived my Mother-in-law.. don't anyone tell her I mentioned it else Christmas dinner will be a frosty affair.
Bushy's in Richmond, just a stone's throw geographically speaking from Central London. For me, living in east London, it seems a long way these days, taking at least an hour to get there by train. But it's well worth the visit. It's an amazing park. They have more than 300 red and fallow deer. These are big, BIG mammals. They look powerful but delicate at the same time.
Thankfully it's not rutting season, so the males are happy to watch us, watching them without flexing their muscles and waggling those aforementioned antlers... each antler on a red deer can weigh up to 3 kilograms, that's equal to three bags of sugar. Heavy enough to do serious damage.
I'm in Bushy Park off the Chestnut Walk on Monday but our London Team, ably supported by volunteers, are there all week, waiting to help you discover the deer and other wildlife that live in Bushy Park.. but rest assured, my gran will not be putting in an appearance in the bushes. God rest Mary Brumpton.
My jays have been busy burying acorns in our garden.
It's said that jays remember the location of evey nut they bury. They're smart, but not normally thought of as tame birds. If you wander through St James's Park of a morning you'll often see a man waiting for someone to spot him. Once he knows he's got an audience, he whistles and along come a couple of jays to sit on his hand to be fed. Is it learned behaviour or driven by need? All I can say is that they've trained that man well.
So, back to our garden. It's knee deep in leaves. Do rake your fallen leaves into a pile in a quiet corner where they won't get blown around. That mound will become a sanctuary for bugs, toads and slimy things, keen to find somewhere cosy to spend winter. Eventually that pile of leaves will become a fantastic mulch, helping create moist, yummy soil.
I've been so busy of late that I hadn't noticed my string of solar-powered fairy lights weren't working. Further investigation this weekend revealed the cable had been chewed in half. It wasn't me. My children swear blind they didn't do it. So that leaves my band of resident grey squirrels. I've given up trying to get rid of them and now just enjoy their antics, with the occassional swear word directed their way when they excavate newly planted pots.
Every creature has its role and place in the natural web and fulfils those roles with gusto, whether it's a predator snatching a tasty treat (including, sadly on occassions, threatened species) or a nest-building wasp chewing layers off my garden shed. The natural world is an anarchaic riot of sound, movement and colour, creating its own splendid balance when left to its own devices. All too often our lifestyles disrupt that balance.
Just when you think you've got it sussed, along comes something that slaps you in the face. Last year a couple of serins turned up at our Rainham Marsh nature reserve on the banks of the Thames at Purfleet. Wow, we all went. This year we shrieked like ten year olds in a sweet shop hearing that another couple of serin have returned to the same spot! Serin are yellowy-green European birds; finches. They don't normally come here, especially in winter, but we've been predicting that with climate change, they'll extend their range across the English Channel. Last winter they stayed at Rainham to see in the New Year, so you've probably got time to go and see them. Our visitor centre has a shop too, so you can do some Christmas shopping away from high street crowds.
If this isn't convincing you of the power, majesty and brilliance of wildlife, come and join our Speed Dating with Nature event. It starts Friday and runs through to Sunday 29 November in Richmond's Bushy Park. We'll be looking at the UK's biggest mammals, red deer; as well as fallow deer, sika deer and maybe even some muntjac deer. Red deer are big, more than three times the weight of your average (male) Londoner, with antlers that can do serious damage. There'll be lots of other resident critters to view and we'll be doing our best to point them all out. Just don't expect fairy light illumination.
If you've ever set out to see a kingfisher, the chances are you've returned home disappointed.
I hopped on London's Northern Line to Gospel Oak to work at our Date with Nature on Hampstead Heath with no expectations for the day what so ever. What a day it proved to be. There were the usual but wonderful suspects; cormorants, tufted ducks, coots, moorhens, starlings, crows, swans, mallard and of course parakeets.
You know what's coming so, yes. I did see a kingfisher. Twice! They are so gorgeous. The movement, the colour and dynamics. Everything about them makes you stand and stare slack-jawed. One of our great volunteers, Don Wright had brought along a nifty digital video camera and while his partner, Clare, chatted to visitors, he captured some great footage of the kingfisher.
The same day I was within two metres of a pair of jays, pecking at the ground, oblivious to the people and dogs around them. Luckily, I have a pair of jays that visit our garden at home. Jays too are stunning to look at; maybe I'm a sucker for anything turquoise. The British Museum's Aztec collection is a typical example where the colour is at its best, with turquoise mosaics on skulls, carved snakes and all manner of artefacts.
It was incredibly mild on the heath and ladybirds were nesting in the corners of our marquee. If they didn't find somewhere to shelter over the weekend, I fear this week's cold weather will have taken its toll. They'll look for soft centres of twigs and crevices in trees and buildings. Some will shelter in shrubs or dead wood and this is another area of concern as quite a few piles of wood and cut shrubbery have been gathered ready for bonfire night.
Please give your bonfire a good check over before you set it alight. I'm not suggesting a painstaking CSI style fingertip search. Just look for wildlife before burning. Bugs, hedgehogs and birds may be sheltering in or around your Guy Fawkes night pyre. If you fancy a wildlife walk with Guy Fawkes history thrown-in? Visit our Rye Meads reserve in the upper Lee Valley. The gunpowder plotters supposedly met in the old Rye House ... all that remains is the gatehouse but it's a link with the past in an unexpected spot.