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.

mallard starting to get in the mood for spring  …… the daffodil have appeared …..

a heron makes a fly-past ….

and the mallard takes a dive….

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.

Best wishes for Christmas and the New Year from the Watercress Wildlife Association ………..

and could this be evidence of someone who should have used the main gate ……?

Stick to dry land in the future, even if it is covered with snow !

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.

present on site today, some welcome, some not . . .

the pair of little grebes are back, I assume it’s the same two.
Here’s one of them, they are staying close together compared to previous seasons.

there were about 10 collared doves on the feeder today, nothing else got near while they mobbed the perches.

one of the four ring-necked parakeets seen today, if this lot get a hold in the area, things may never be the same!

The recording of a Daubenton is available as a WAV sound file here.

It struck me this year in my weekly monitoring of butterflies that I didn’t see more than an occasional butterfly at a time on buddleia (known as the ‘butterfly bush’) whereas last year I saw on at least 3 occasions more than 10 (comma, peacock, painted ladies, red admiral). It’s all been a bit disappointing this year apart from a flurry of gatekeepers and not on buddleia. Has anyone had a different experience with buddleias this year?