Urban Birder The
David Lindo finds hidden birding delights (and squawking parakeets) as he visits St Albans
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hen I explore cities for this column I am usually accompanied by a local birder who is invariably either older or, at the very least, a similar age to me. A recent visit to St Albans blew that statistic out of the water. Luke Massey, my guide for the day, is a fresh-faced, 19-year-old university student who, when not studying and birding in Canterbury, is to be found patrolling the birding spots that this ancient town has to offer. When we met he was a little bit worse for wear after a big night, so we took it easy strolling around our first location, Verulamium Park. As you may have gathered from its name, there is a Roman connection. Indeed the park is on the site of the Roman city of Verulamium that was apparently established as a city around the same time as a certain Londinium. The park itself covers around 100 acres and includes some still visible Roman wall relics. The River Ver that flanks the site to the east and the Verulamium Lake itself holds the usual common duck species spiced up with the occasional Teal, and the small wood on the island in the middle of the lake is home to a reasonably sized heronry. The park has attracted Green Sandpipers, with Common Sandpipers being a local rarity, as was a recent Black Tern and Egyptian Goose. Luke explained that it is well worth scanning the skies above the woods on the northeast horizon, as you may be lucky enough to see soaring Red Kites and Buzzards. We popped around to the headquarters of the Herts & Middlesex Wildlife Trusts that skirts the northwestern edge of the park to check out their small wildlife garden. Strangely, they are not open over the weekend but a quick peer over the wall resulted in views of Chaffinches and various tit species gorging themselves on the ample feeders. I love visiting those tucked away little sites within cities that only a few locals visit and St Albans has a
St Albans Factfile City species list: 150 Best site: Lemsford Springs Websites: Herts & Middlesex Wildlife Trusts www.wildlifetrust.org.uk/herts Watercress Wildlife Association www.watercress-net.org.uk ■ Thanks to Luke Massey twitter.com/LMasseyImages Additional information from Barry Trevis, Lemsford Springs NR warden
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few of those. One such site is Riverside Road Watercress Beds, a short drive from Verulamium Park and literally a few hundred yards away from the town centre. We were greeted by a flock of Jackdaws loafing in the treetops and on adjacent rooftops and cooing Woodpigeons that immediately made me think of the summer even though it was a freezing cold day in January. I really felt a sense of tranquillity when we walked into this tiny local nature reserve run by the Watercress Wildlife Association. It is a delightful area of damp woodland, small ponds and the ever-present River Ver flowing through. The Alders were alive with Siskins variously singing, feeding and drinking from small pools. We also found a solitary Lesser Redpoll in their midst. No doubt there were more around. Water Rails were a distinct possibility according to Luke, although my heart sank slightly when I heard the familiar squawking of my old friends the Ring-necked Parakeets, a bird yet to gain a toehold in the area. In the summer, the site boasts small numbers of the usual common woodland warblers, plus it’s a good place to look for Kingfishers. No visit to the St Albans area would be complete without a visit to perhaps its most famous site, Tyttenhanger Gravel Pits. It is well watched by birders and regularly attracts upwards of 140 species annually. Whenever I think of Tyttenhanger I think of Ospreys, a raptor that does seem to appear every year. It was my first time at the site so Luke introduced me to where the small Tree Sparrow colony was near Garden Wood on the eastern edge of the pits. It is apparently one of the most reliable sites in the county for this nationally scarce species. I didn’t see any at the feeding station, but there were plenty of Yellowhammers and Reed Buntings. The fields near Willows Farm, to the south, were alive with mixed parties of Redwing, Fieldfare, Lapwings, Common and Black-headed Gulls, all stalking the ground for tasty morsels. The thin tree cover leading from Willows Farm into Garden Wood is also well worth sifting through for the elusive Lesser Spotted Woodpecker. The Herts & Middlesex Wildlife Trusts’ Lemsford Springs Nature Reserve, on the edge of neighbouring Welwyn Garden City, was by far my favourite place. Bordered by the River Lea to the west, Lemsford Springs is an old watercress bed surrounded by woodland, meadow and marsh. The lagoons were brimming with millions of freshwater shrimps that in turn attract a myriad of water birds. We watched an obliging Kingfisher that posed beautifully on the end of a pole just outside the hide, and beneath it a Little Egret that was stirring up food items with its foot. We even enjoyed a surprise Water Rail that swam in full view from one clump of reeds to another. But it is the Green Sandpipers that the site is most famous for. A well-studied bird here, as many have been ringed, trust volunteers have worked out that a single Green Sandpiper can guzzle up to 8,000 shrimps a day. Isn’t it amazing what can be discovered in our cities when we simply go and look for it?
10/03/2011 16:09