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Amwell

As I had to go over to East London yesterday I took the opportunity to go up to Amwell which I hadn't visited for some time. Since my last visit the lakes have been taken over by the Herts and Middlesex Trust who have put access with hides and a nature trail. It makes seeing the birds a lot easier but has also made the whole area seem tamed and less exciting.
Despite the improvements the first spottings of interest were while crossing the canal with a cock reed bunting perching in the bushes and a pair of common terns flying along the cut. On the margins of the lake were lapwings, one bird with a magnificent crest as well as a variety of roosting water fowl and cormorants. According to the notice board redshank were nesting and I managed to see one at the waters edge as well as an oystercatcher fly across the lake. Other birds of note were heron, shoveller and gadwall. When I first visited this site around 20 years ago there was a pair of egyptian geese in residence, either they didn't breed or their descendents moved on long ago.

I did have an interesting conversation with another birder who had been getting excellent photographic results simply by holding his iPhone up to the eyepiece of his telescope. I experimented with my rather cheaper Samsung without much success but will get my own scope out of the cupboard and see if I can improve.

This morning it was nice to see a goldfinch in the front garden but my blood pressure took a turn for the worse reading an article in the Bucks Examiner about our local "ancient woodland" by a journo who clearly had no idea what the expression means. By no streatch of the imagination should Cowcroft Wood have been so described as it is very clearly secondary woodland on top of old brick and tile working.

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