Thanks to active member Phil, we have a Flickr group which is populated with loads of fantastic pictures of the insect and bird life that eager photographers have catalogued on their visits to the site, including Firecrests and Lesser redpoll. It’s setup as an open group so you can contribute your own pictures and videos to share with everybody. Please do! You’ll find a permanent link in the sidebar to the right.

Helped by the glorious weather, it was a busy day on site yesterday. A hardworking bunch of volunteers did some fantastic work hedge laying in the pygtle.

By the end of the day the hedge was almost unrecognisable from when they started work. Fantastic looking and also great for the wildlife, providing a more dense place for birds in particular to nest.

Sunday morning, the rain has come,  the maintenance crew have had their monthly exercise and left for home and a well-earned rest.  Here’s a view through the rain, over the mere, from the birdhide.

Appearing between the two willow trees is our willow sculpture, at an early stage and forming  one of a series of temporary installations  to be created around St Albans during February and March.

……. and as seen from the Albanway cyclepath, under construction. What is it?  Rotary washing line, organic satellite dish ?  You may well ask   …  more details to be provided in our next newsletter.

Welcome to the new WWA website, which replaces the original sightings blog and website. It incorporates a blog as the core of the site so we can put new and interesting content front and centre, and to make it easy to keep the site fresh and vibrant. It also contains pages of non-blog material which will be added to over time. As of this writing there’s just the about page, but expect to see pages with all the newsletters, a map of the site and other good stuff.

Note that we have a new URL for this new site so change your bookmarks: https://www.watercresslnr.org.uk, which you must have found already as you’re reading this! A copy of the old website has been incorporated into this new system and is available from a link in the right-hand menu so it will still be here and accessible for ever more.

If you have comments or suggestions, you can add them as comments to this post.

Work started at today’s working party on the new pond on site and it seems that quite a bit of the local wildlife has already moved in. Several newts were spotted in the new pond, in addition to the pond skater seen on the surface. As we were digging and using the soil to level footpaths and fill in other holes this small frog was also found in the grass.

I know they say that nature will often be quick to colonise new ponds, but I didn’t think it would be this quick!

Walking around the Reserve today in the glorious February sunshine, I counted 23 species of bird. I won’t name them all, but the more interesting sightings were as follows.

Water Rail feeding at the water’s edge
Kingfisher
Grey Wagtail – on main bridge
Heron
Pair of Coots in ‘courting’ mode
Small flock of Siskins in the Alder trees in the ‘Sanctuary’
Jay
Long-tailed tits on birdfeeder

Woodpeckers were heard but not seen.

Several small fish were seen in the main lake.

On the flora side:
Snowdrops, Sweet Violets, Marsh Marigolds and Daffodils are in bloom
Hazel and Alder trees have catkins

Sunday January 27th

Snowdrops have appeared along the riverbank. Maybe early, but about the same time as last year.

 

 

 

 

After due consideration of the Health and Safety policy and a detailed risk assessment, intrepid volunteers scale the site uplands looking for early flowering alpines.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

…….and back at base camp by the lake, the traditional launching of straw into the water.

 

 

There is a perfectly good reason for this activity. If you want to know more, contact us via the website!

First thanks to Sam for the previous photos. Like dancing pandas, things only seem to appear when I turn my back.

On site on a very wet Sunday to look at things……

It’s taking a lot of effort to create the seasonal pond………….

and it will be a particularly attractive feature, believe me!

No more suggestions for the shape though, it’s supposed to look natural.

Whilst walking around the Reserve and nearby areas to check for wind damage, two Mute swans and a Cormorant flew over the Reserve, all within seconds of each other. One Elder tree has been blown over at the Reserve, and two very large Ash trees and an Elder are down, close to the Nunnery allotments.