Chiltern Birder

With the hot weather at the weekend a walk among the bluebells was thought a good idea. With a perfectly still warm day the scent of the flowers hung in the air and in the Chilterns the flowers were still at their best. The following day we went to College Lake near Tring. I hadn't been to this reserve for the best part of two decades. When I first visited it was just a hole in the chalk full of water with a few coot swimming around. Now it is landscaped and well populated although the layout makes the whole thing feel staged at times. In the hot weather on Sunday light and heat was reflecting off the chalk and made walking in some parts quite uncomfortable. In the shady parts there were some nice displays of dog violets. Islands created in the lake had attracted a lot of breeding water birds. Terns were very much in evidence, a marked contrast to Fishers Green where the black headed gulls seemed to be monopolising the tern rafts. We also saw oystercatcher, redshank and lapwing...

With the warmest day of the year so far and magnificent displays of bluebells locally I decided that a walk in the woods with the camera was called for. The abandonment of traditional hedge laying allows these wonderful sculptural forms to develop over the years   To get back to birding I was also lucky to see a hobby fly across the path of the car and perch on a nearby power cable. The swift like silhouette was quite unmistakable. In the garden the wrens do seem to be in residence in the bat box, as I was standing close to it one went past my left ear at speed to perch in the rowan tree.