This time I am concentrating on the few square miles around where I actually live. This most obviously begins with our garden (a few square yards), and the walk to the paper shop. So exciting!
Our house is a small modern detached property in a 1970's estate of "little boxes" very typical of new towns like Redditch. It sounds pretty dull, but I am intending to demonstrate that wildlife occurs everywhere, and that you just have to look.
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| The back garden |
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| The front garden |
We moved to Redditch twelve years ago, and our corner never fails to impress us with its greenness. Vestigial hedgerows, and even strips of woodland abound. Even better, a few hundred yards up the road is a Worcestershire Trust Reserve called Isley Alders. Not that I ever go there. But more fool me, because it is apparently an example of a lowland acid bog with an unusual flora, and maybe fauna.
Another possibility, a short car journey away, is Arrow Valley Lake. This is basically a municipal park with a rather linear lake in the middle of it. Good for Great Crested Grebes and the like. I did visit this pretty regularly for six months a few winters ago, until I got bored of nodding to the same dog-walkers every morning.
Many years ago I twitched a Common Eider there one May, proof if you need it that anything can turn up anywhere.
I am writing this blog as though someone is likely to read it, but to tell you the truth the only reader may be me. In which case I may well whinge about stuff, like over officious gamekeepers at my other patch, the destruction of the countryside, politics, football, anything really.
To be continued...
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