June 2024

I did my monthly bird count on the 24th. It's a quiet time of year, as many species have raised their young and so are not rushing round collecting food any more. Nevertheless, the Swift breeds late and their nestlings will be newly hatched at this time of year, so the 25 Swifts were commuting to and from their distant nests to take the insects that emerge from the lake. Swifts are very variable in occurrence, making it difficult to detect any trend, but numbers rose between 1986 and 2006 only to decline back down in the last 20 years. In contrast, the Egytian goose breeds very early and numbers rise to a summer peak as parents and their grown young gravitate to the lake in June. There were 40 of them, with just the single late young bird standing out from the rest in size. Numbers locally have been stable since around 2016. It's a similar story with the Jackdaw, where the numbers in the park are swollen in June as parents bring their full-sized offspring to feed in the grasslands of the Great Field and Athletics stadium. There were 55 Jackdaws in the count. Most bird song was over, but there were a few Blackbirds and Wrens still singing. Remarkably, there were two Song thrushes singing: one in Ashen Grove Wood and the other in the railside hedge south of the brook. The huge decline in their numbers since 1990 now seems over.

It seems we have just emerged from the long wet Spring, but the ground was already parched and three parts of the Great field and the bowls green were being irrigated right from the park opening at 06:35. Sadly, it seems we must have everything tidy for the Wimbledon queue: the edge of the northern hedgerow has been pruned to a straight edge, removing most of the Honeysuckles and Dog rose flowers: these are not to be enjoyed by those in the queue it seems. There was a bit of colour in the Lofthouse Glade, however, with yellow buttercups, white Hogweed, Bindweed and Clover, and the purple of Hedge woundwort. The Yellow flag was over. Some of the cornfield annuals added to the Hornbeam plots beside the perimeter path have come again from last-year's seed: there were Common poppies, Corncockle and Cornflower, an echo of the arable weeds that would have been there in the 18th century park.

The pillar on the northern edge of Horse Close Wood car park has been vandalised and the door is hanging off. Someone has tipped some garden waste behind it, presumably ignorant of the remnant population of Dog's Mercury there. Someone has spread wood chips into the near parts of the Lofthouse Glade beside the path there. The path was already far too wide. It's not too late to rake these off to reveal the buried woodland meadow below!

The ground flora of the part of Ashen Grove Wood within the public park had been mown recently. This area has long been recognised as part of the Site of Borough Importance for Nature Conservation, so it's sad that such an inappropriate treatment has been applied. This part of the ancient wood has long been used for informal play, which would benefit from a more naturalistic vegetation, sadly denied to the children.