This month I Spotted Flycatcher

The patch has been wet - very wet - for most of May. And when it hasn't been wet, it's been cold and/or windy.

Lovely.

I definitely underestimated the cold (just 3 degrees centigrade) when I set off at 6am on 1st May for a walk around the full perimeter of the village patch - down to Whitnash Brook, past Crown Hill to the Fosse, and back again. 

But if the weather conditions were in in stark contrast to those of a year ago, the birds didn't seem to mind much. My morning haul was pretty much the same as it had been 12 months earlier, a mix of year-round farmland birds (Skylark, Yellowhammer and Linnet) and the newly returned warblers (Chiffchaffs, Whitethoat and a single Lesser Whitethroat). 

The only less regular sightings were a Red-Legged Partridge and a Roe Deer, although pleasingly there did seem to be more Swallows around this year. I counted 7 in all, so fingers crossed that the wet weather we've had since then hasn't set their breeding season back too badly.

By contrast with that cold and grey morning trudge through some very muddy fields, Leam Valley nature reserve was looking glorious when I visited on 16th May. A welcome break in the weather, however brief, meant I got to see the site in its spring best - hawthorn bursting into blossom, red campion and speedwell joining the late bluebells, and the meadow a riot of yellow with buttercups, dandelions and cowslips.

Here's one I snapped earlier (2010 in fact)...
a Spotted Flycatcher at Napton Church

Some days are just good birding days, and this was one. As well as the decent weather, I found myself in just the right frame of mind to take my time, check out every sight and sound, and properly savour the day. 

As a result I probably watched as many birds - not species, just individual birds - as on any trip in recent memory. 

The morning started with a line of Canada Geese swimming towards the Radford Road bridge, mum and dad front and back, casting careful glances around for anything which might harm the two goslings lined up between them. It finished with a handsome male Reed Bunting singing atop a stem in Radford Meadow.

And in between there were highlights aplenty:a Nuthatch low on the riverside willows; a male Bullfinch feeding and whistling softly in the hawthorn scrub; a pair of Swallows criss-crossing a paddock; some obligingly showy Reed Warbles in good voice; and a Little Grebe teaching its chick to feed with constant diving, first one, then the other, then both together. 

But my favourite find was real testimony to the benefits of slow birding, thoughful birding or, as one book suggests*, mindful birding. Because today, in a reserve full of blackcaps and blackcap song, I didn't simply chalk a little brown warbler-sized bird down as a female blackcap and move on. 

Instead I watched it for a bit until it emerged out of the shadows, revealing first a streaked chin, then two-tone marking along the primary feathers and finally, as it turned towards me, a streaked crown. It was a Spotted Flycatcher, a bird I've seen in various parts of my patch before (albeit in depressingly reduced numbers in recent years) but never at Leam Valley. 

These characterful little birds are always late returners to the UK, often as late as mid May, so this bird could still be on passage northwards, or it may have settled here for the summer. Either way, after a few 'nothing special' trips it was a welcome reminder to take time to appreciate every individual bird and to take nothing for granted.  

*The Art of Mindful Birdwatching by Claire Thompson, a lovely book about the aspects of birdwatching which I think are probably the most important (and often, sadly, the most neglected).

Special places

Wherever you are in Britain, you are unlikely to live far from a nature reserve.

These vary dramatically in scale and ambition, from tiny local reserves on the outskirts of towns and villages through to major sites of global significance. The creation of reserves has been the backbone of conservation work in the UK for many decades, and together they form a precious patchwork of protected sites across an increasingly nature-depleted country.

Warwickshire Wildlife Trust (WWT) manages more than 65 reserves, several of which form part of my regular patch - Leam Valley, Ufton Fields and Whitnash Brook. But a few days of fine and dry (although far from warm) weather at the tail end of April gave me a chance to explore a few of those reserves which I'd not yet visited, despite their being within a few miles of home.

Bishops Hill is one of Warwickshire Wildlife Trust's newest reserves, acquired in 2018. At 16 hectares it was ideal for a late afternoon walk in the sun. 

The signature habitat is the hill itself, an expanse of unimproved grassland already bursting with early season wildflowers but soon to erupt full of life with butterflies and other invertebrates (a passing Orange Tip was a hint of what is to come).

But beyond the hill is also a fabulous mosaic of scrub and mature woodland, plus the mysterious and beautiful Blue Pool. Even at this time of the afternoon there were plenty of birds around, most notably a good number of Willow Warbler which we heard as we toured the site. 

The next trip was to a trio of sites which have in recent years extended the already magnificent Brandon Marsh nature reserve, the jewel in Warwickshire Wildlife Trust's crown on the outskirts of Coventry.

Brandon Reach

The ancient woodand of Piles Coppice

is the newest of these, acquired in 2019. A mix of rough grassland, scrub and woodland, this land links Brandon with two other reserves - the longer established Claybrookes Marsh and the ancient woodland of Piles Coppice.

Claybrookes Marsh is a great example of a post industrial site turned good, having for most of the 20th century been the railhead for Binley Colliery. Once it fell into disuse and started to return to its natural marsh and grasslands, the discovery of 49 species of nationally and regionally scarce insect species saved it from redevelopment and secured its designation as an SSSI. Now it sits squeezed between a housing estate and the busy A45 as the unlikely home of a remakable diversity of wildflowers, amphibians and insects (including up to a dozen different dragonfly species in the summer).

There's nothing quite like
a spring carpet of bluebells

Finally we finished at Piles Coppice, a world away from the post industrial. This is ancient woodland of great beauty, the bluebells and celandine resplendent at this time of year. Despite being just a few miles from the centre of Coventry (as the Nuthatch flies), it is hard to imagine being anywhere more beautiful and tranquil.

These special places are just a few of the many sites already protected and managed for nature by Warwickshire Wildlife Trust. Excitingly, having acquired and protected more than 65 such sites across Warwickshire, Coventry and Solihull over the last 50 years, the trust is now moving into a new phase in its work. 

This new strategy will see it acquring and managing places which aren't necessarily special for nature yet, but have the potential to become special. Habitat creation offers the chance to not just manage the decline in nature in Warwickshire but reverse it, with huge benefits not just for nature and the environment but also the well-being of all of us who live here.

The potential to grow these fragmented jewels into larger reserves, with sufficient scale and connectivity to make a real impact on Warwickshire's natural environment and biodiversity, underlines once again why it has always been so important to me to be a supporter, a member and now a volunteer with the trust.

Warwickshire Wildlife Trust's Nature Recovery Fund appeal is aiming to raise £3m towards this ambitious and exciting programme of land acquistion and habitat creation. You can find details at www.warwickshirewildlifetrust.org.uk/appeal and I have no hesitation in encouraging anyone with a love of Warwickshire's natural environment to consider giving something towards this vision of what this fabulous county of ours could become in the not-so-distant future.