Had an interesting couple of days in London. In addition to doing Beddington Farmlands, Mitcham Common Gunsite and Watermeads in the Wandle Valley and Staines Res on the way back to Oxford I also got to see my 74 year old religious zealot mother get intoxicated after she accidentally consumed something. Ebird list from Beddington here. A few picture highlights below:
First-winter Caspian Gull at Beddington- not such the regular speciality it once was there as the gull numbers are now much reduced
Linnets at Beddington
Male and female Goldeneye at Staines
The best view I got of the Lesser Scaup at Staines (enlarged below).
It's actually a bit of a novelty coming back to London to see these everywhere.
Good work by Zach and Charlie at the farmlands opening up the viewing from the southern lake hide
The 'Wet Grassland'- this will never be wet grassland I suspect but still a nice bit of scrape. Valencia/Viridor/KKR have kicked the can down the road further by delaying the 'watering down of the ecological ambitions revisioning submission' to the end of March. All of this (the Beddington Farmlands Project) is legally obligated to be completed and opened to the public by December 31st 2023. Quite a conflict appears to be a near certainty.
I meant to do my mid-century obituary-while-not-dead-yet last year when I turned 50 in September but I wasn't bored enough. However now we are in the depths of winter and as cabin fever bites hard it's time for more drivel on this blog. So here's the first part of my life story, one of the 8000 million insignificant human stories now playing out on this tiny lost planet floating around the eternal universe.
So there are few places worst in the universe to be born into than a South London council estate in the 1970s. Roundshaw Council Estate was so bad that they literally blew the whole thing up and started again. Here's my mate Wayne's flat getting blown up.
Roundshaw was a brutalist style socialist project of the 1970s inspired from the Communist tenement blocks of Eastern Europe. My mum was a 'societal refugee' from Malta (her fiance died when he was 17 so she was on the scrap heap by not being married by 16) and my dad was a postman (who pulled my mum in the Cats Whiskers night club in Streatham with pick up lines she couldn't understand because she couldn't speak a word of English). They didn't particularly fall in love but were equally hopeless and being driven by cultural pressures they got married. By the time my mum understood what my dad was saying and realised what a penniless cockney wide boy he was it was all too late. Like a lot of people in poverty they thought it was a good idea to bring six children into the hell they were in and ended up in council housing and on benefits.
I was born with the umbilical chord wrapped around my neck, seemingly trying to hang myself before it all started but I didn't succeed. My childhood was on a slab of concrete (called a deck). The commie idea behind the deck was the shared space at the front of the flats where all the kids could play. As it was a 'floating' slab of concrete there were no cars to worry about.
The deck, where I grew up.
This was such a natureless hell that I don't even remember seeing a Feral Pigeon or House Sparrow there.
Anyway at age seven (1978) Margaret Thatcher had started her mission to rid the UK of socialists and commies so she encouraged 'council scum' to buy their own homes. On a below minimum wage my parents were able to get a mortgage and buy a 4 bedroom house (eight of us plus my nan later had to share rooms). Granted the house we bought was next to a sewage farm and we were one of the few people in Hackbridge (the crack) that had 'moved up in the world' to get there- most others there had fallen from grace.
As the only money we had went to pay off the mortgage, we couldn't keep up with the 'flash jacks' (now called Chavs i.e. poor people who spend all their money on consumer shite) so in the late 1970s and early 1980s we couldn't afford the ZX Spectrum, Acorn BBC, Commodore 64 computers , video recorder or even a colour TV. They couldn't even afford to dress me in Farahs and a Y-jumper so I had to go round dressed up in a Jamaican boys clothes (complete with tropical patterned pants and vest) who my mum knew from her church and was two years older than me and was growing out of his clothes. I was basically perpetually bored (despite the oversized dazzling underwear) so we had to be creative to pass the time- which usually meant fighting and torturing my siblings.
Just before we escaped Roundshaw Council Estate, Fundamental Christian Evangelists from the southern states of North America had launched a 'mission' on the estate to 'save souls'. They were from a cult called the Church of Christ (which featured on the TV a lot during the 1970s for brainwashing). Anyway, they brought the 'good news' to my mum and dad, basically convincing them that they were actually global elites instead of 'council scum', and were chosen by God to build a spiritual empire on Earth (for a small weekly donation and signing up to be a member- a numbers game to keep the preachers funding coming in as part of US Jesus Imperialism).
So by the time we got to Hackbridge I had two choices, either stay around the entertainment free house with all the bible bashing, hymn singing, american evangelists and cult members or bugger off over the nearby sewage farm with my mates to throw stones at the gypsy horses penises when they got erections. So I chose the latter and we also split our time between trying to hit the balls eye (literally) and stoning the ducks in Beddington Park. We also did a bit of arson (setting fire to Mitcham Common and Beddington Farmlands) and mild vandalism (although my mate Tim went to prison eventually as things used to get out of hand when we went out with him). When at home I used to pass the time by pulling the legs off spiders (I even wrote a song about that here). So I was slowly 'connecting with nature'. Meanwhile my brother used to sell soft drugs and pirated porn at the front door during prayer meetings when my parents were occupied talking to Jesus.
Anyway it was on one of our Horse ball-eyes missions with Wayne and Chris to the sewage farm that I saw something stranger than anything I'd seen before (and I had seen a lot of weird shit). There was a bloke looking through a telescope over the sludge beds. I asked him what he was doing and he said he was looking for a Lesser Yellowlegs. This was in 1984. I remember thinking WTF is a Lesser @@ing Yellowlegs. Just then the Thames Water van started driving towards us so we had to leg it (as we were trespassing as it was permit only). As we legged it off we did the standard thing and shouted insults at the telescope bloke.
Shortly after, an ex- Devil worshipper in my parents cult (he'd been converted!) gave me a bird book and a poster of garden birds. I put the poster up on my wall and read the book because I didn't have any other books (apart from the Bible) or any other posters that my mum's religion would permit me to put up. Meanwhile at school we started doing nature studies too. Then my parents bought a caravan in Bognor Regis and we started going to the coast on weekends and visiting Arundel (the free bit outside the WWT reserve). We also visited my mum's island of Malta and I met my cousins and uncles who were bird hunters and had stuffed bird collections which I found fascinating.
Now on family weekends to Bognor and in between soft vandalism with my mates in the local green spaces (we also built camps along the River Wandle) I started noticing birds from the ex-Devil worshipper's bird book and poster. I started ticking them off in my book and so I went back to the sewage farm on a new mission and started asking more questions to the strange bloke with the telescope, Garry Messenbird, who started showing me what he was looking at through his telescope. I was electrified and soon became obsessed. In 1985 I started my first birding notebook here. So it began.
Been working in London for last two to three days and been trying to squeeze in as much birding as possible. Did Beddington Farmlands on Wednesday morning, Mitcham Common Gunsite this morning and spent this evening at Staines Res. Beddington Farmlands Ebird list HERE and Staines Res HERE.
Highlights included Redwings on the move and a couple of Pintail at the Farmlands and Short-eared Owl, 2 Rock Pipit, 1 Water Pipit, 2nd-winter Med Gull, Common and Green Sandpipers, Yellow Wagtail and 6 Black-necked Grebe at Staines.
Rock Pipit at Staines
Short-eared Owl putting the gulls up over the North Basin
Yellow Wagtail at Staines
Had at least nine Jays at the farmlands which are typically conspicuous now
A few Chiffs at the farmlands
Don't always get an obliging Wren
A busy time of year at work- I had 17 jobs to look at this shift. Here's one of the more formal gardens we do. More HERE
Here's the last pics of our time at the Beddington Obs. Urban Ecology living at it's best? We certainly made good use of the space we had in a two bedroom flat.
Drone shot (obs top left), showing the incredible green space surviving in South London, a contiguous belt between Beddington Park- Beddington Farmlands and Mitcham Common (over 1000 acres). Based at the obs we spent the last decade or so recording and reporting on the biodiversity of this area HERE and campaigning for a premier urban nature reserve
View from the north lake, the top left window is the 'bug room'
THE OFFICE
The cock pit of Little Oak Group (above and below)
THE LIBRARY
Part of the library - the book shelves were actually in all the rooms
THE FRONT ROOM
Home cinema for watching BBC Wildlife Documentaries
THE BUG ROOM
Main feature in the bug room was a third floor window moth trap
Our pan species list reached over 2500 species during our studies . Some of the results HERE (in the drop down menu but needs updating).
Each year we grew a few vegetables in the secondary glazing
THE MUSIC STUDIO LOFT
This is where we wrote, practised and recorded for Thee Bryans, our community eco-band
THE GARDEN
We planted up the communal gardens with wildlife gardening plants
The Bird feeders (complete with Tree Sparrows)
We annexed most of the estate grounds (within our hose pipe range) and planted it up
The back garden overlooking the farmlands (before the incinerator and before the Victorian bridge was demolished)
The building of the incinerator was interesting to watch
THE VILLAGE
One of our key objectives was bringing biodiversity into the local urban environment. We carried out various projects, working with Bioregional and the Hackbridge Neighbourhood Development Group including work on the communal green spaces, road verges, wildlife gardens and improvements to the local church grounds.
New entrance to the farmlands with planters and trees
Its been quite a cold April with a rather persistent northerly and despite plenty of sun during the day it's been cold particularly at night. Seems like spring has been unfolding rather slowly as a result with morning frosts, very few moths and birds trickling in without any classic fall conditions. Despite this there was an interesting large fall mid-week of Willow Warblers and Wheatears during a frosty clear morning at Portland (and nowhere else on south coast by looks of it) so seems like a concentrated flock of migrants hit the cold air mass resulting in an unpredictable and atypical fall there. Also despite the cold weather there's been some quality migrants pushing through slowly with lots of stop offs by the looks of it- there was Greenshank and Whimbrel at the farmlands this morning in clear conditions.
I've not been able to get out as much as liked as busy moving out of the obs and having to quote on Wednesday and Thursday at moment too. Had a look round Little Woodcote with Sid on Friday morning (no migrants except for a single Blackcap), had a Whitethroat on Biker's yesterday on a walk with Gillian across Mitcham Common (very few migrants there too) and been keeping an eye out the obs window- not much apart from a few Swallows.
The mini-farm at the Old Vic is going pretty slow too but broad beans and peas are in and garlic and spring onions are doing well. Got Parsley growing in the window and no sign of the potatoes coming up yet that we put in a few weeks ago.
So all rather slow- a good time to look a things you wouldn't usually have time to look at and appreciate common stuff.
We reared these Painted Lady butterflies with Jacob (bought a kit from InsectLore). Not sure if they survived as the day after we let them go it snowed heavily.
The mini-farm Monday morning and the mini-farm Monday afternoon (more or less). The coach house conversion is coming on well.
Garden of the week at work was this colourful wildlife garden in Morden
Little Woodcote- a pleasant walk with Sid but nothing too exciting Ebird list HERE
Jackdaws at the Old Vicarage
A couple of bees at the Old Vic- will identify once I can get in the mobile obs and get my books - the van is currently packed full with Thee Bryans music studio which we are moving to Harrison's new loft studio in Gloucester.
According to my new PlantNet app this is annual sowthistle- a new one for the Old Vic pan species list I believe.
St George's Mushrooms for breakfast at Lee and Rachel's on Saturday morning - Lee's wildlife garden is looking great and St George's mushrooms with garden chives on toast was even better
Saw out first juvenile passerine in the garden but unfortunately Izzy saw it too
First harvest of the year- the spring onions that we put in during December. Mini-farm 2021 (below)- need to tidy this up and get everything planted up but this weekend we put in carrots, radish, kale and beetroots. Bryan put the sugar snap peas and broad beans in already and we put the potatoes in earlier in March so things are getting there. Tomatoes, more peas and runner beans are in the green house.
