November 2022

I did the bird count on the 28^th and sampled the lake water the following day. The water clarity of the lake increased greatly over the month and there was no longer any obvious blue-green bacterial bloom, but my plankton net revealed that the commonest species, Aphanizomenon flos-cuculae hadn’t quite gone.

The most remarkable finding was four Little egrets feeding, and also perched up on old willows, in the southern arm of the lake. The white dots in the photo show this.This looks like a good place for a heronry, but the willows concerned are planned to go in the All England development. Yet another reason to resist the overdevelopment of the golf course and lake. Sadly, bird ‘flu continues to affect the area, with a dead Great-crested grebe seen floating in the lake and a report of a dead Canada goose.

There’s been a good acorn crop this year and a low incidence of the knopper gall. So plentiful food for Jays and Squirrels.

The gates were opened at around 07:00. A section of fence on the western boundary of Horse Close Wood has collapsed into the wood, leaving the rear ends of two properties on Wimbledon Park Road with access no longer secured. The hedge boundary with the golf course north of the stadium had been cut back severely to give a hard edge. Cheap and easy, but not sympathetic for an old hedgerow. Sadly, the over-zealous leaf-blowing continues this year, pushing a big heap against the golf course fence in Ashen Grove Wood: quite the wrong treatment for a semi-natural woodland.