It’s years since I’ve been to RSPB Fairburn Ings, but I’m so happy to be here again. I’m meeting a small group to have a wellbeing in nature walk. We’ve decided on no agenda other than a wander-where-we-will and a soak up of the sunshine which has returned after some distinctly autumnal weather.
Though as yet - apart from the precocious horse-chestnuts - the trees haven’t had the memo re autumn and are mostly still wearing green… albeit getting a bit tired now here and there. But the glinting and dappling of the sunshine on leaves and the red berries of hawthorne, rowan, and rose-hips are brightening up our woodland perimeter walk. And we find gorgeous pink spindle berries too - though I’m annoyed I’d forgotten their name!
But only minutes into our walk we have a very special robin moment. In fact, much longer than a moment. This robin appears to have no fear of us whatsoever - not only allowing me to get very close to him perched in hawthorne at my eye-level height - but even hopping along his branch towards me. I make the ‘pish-pish’ sound birders have told me to do to encourage birds to come out of cover and this definitely works. I remember doing this once with a goldcrest at a similar eye-level and it flying out right into my face, so I feel a little wary when we’re just inches apart. What an intrepid nature explorer I am… scared of a robin. I run the headlines in my head: “Robin attacks woman at local nature reserve”...
I also feel guilty that I’m enticing it out with no food to give it. But there is a moment when I wonder who’s entrancing who, because we have full on eye contact for several minutes and I feel myself slipping into an altered state. But I’m with other people, so decide to stay firmly here. And someone else in the group is able to get some wonderful photos.
Other bird joys include plenty of greylag geese flying: some high up in classic V formation, others seemingly only just above our heads, and making a lot of noise; a beautiful red kite touched by sunlight; plenty of swans with their ‘teenage’ cygnets; herons, coots, moorhens, mallards… the usual wetland inhabitants, but we’re happy to take anything today. And there’s more to take.
One of the group is particularly interested in fungi - and particularly good at spotting it too, so as well as the usual brackets, and earthballs, and inkcaps, we see ‘ears’ - though are uncertain whether they are jelly or wood. We have a chuckle about learning the names of nature stuff (technical term). With only 32 regularly occurring native British tree species, you’d think I could have remembered spindle. Mammals - well under a 100 of those, so possible to know them all. Birds a bit harder with 574 of them; but the diversity prize has to go to beetles with around 4,200 species. My beetle knowledge goes like this: ladybird, stag beetle, shield bug (though there’s even 30 of those, for goodness sake); the rest. Hey ho. Way to go before I become a natural history expert.
Who cares though, on a day like this. Walking back, we notice how the tits and finches are beginning to ‘flock up’... ready for those feeding forays before times get hard. We see blue tits, great tits, greenfinches, goldfinches, and don’t see - but hear, with all their contact calling going on - the very lovely lollipop bird aka long-tailed tit. Watching and waiting at the kingfisher wall, we also don’t see a kingfisher, but enjoy a brief conversation with a man who did, so I guess that’s the next best thing.
A final adventure - a new one for me - is during investigation of some shiny blue beetles and a small white caterpillar (larvae?) on the leaves of an alder tree. I touch the caterpillar very gently and it immediately secretes a bright blue droplet of … of what? Presumably something to scare off or poison whatever it thinks may be about to eat it. Unfortunately, a post-walk Google ramble doesn’t get me anywhere other than discovering it’s not the alder moth larvae, but I do find out that the beetle is called an alder leaf beetle. Excellent. Only 4,196 to go.
