Birding Braunie

This is my first blog since the middle of April. This is mainly due to my working life being turned upside down. It is very difficult to get motivated to write the events of a day when your mind needs to focus on other priorities. But slowly things are improving and life as a freelancer does have a few advantages. An example of this my lunchtimes now consist of a walk around a small pocket of Epping Forest photographing butterflies and dragonflies. In the past it would have been a stressed dash to an overpriced sandwich shop along with a million others and straight back to my desk. (I will save the advantages of not commenting for another day as that’s a blog on its own!) So now I have that out of the way, let’s get on with the business as usual. When you volunteer for the Lee Valley Park, what that really means is you are actually volunteering to experience many amazing things and events. From a ticket to the Bird Fair to organised trips around bird reserves such as Frampton Marsh...

At the moment, every week in the Lee Valley Park brings exciting change. Last week you wouldn’t have heard the Nightingales or Cuckoos, you wouldn’t have seen Orange-tip butterflies, Sedge Warblers or Moorhens feeding their chicks and this week you could. The best way to experience all this change is to get up early I’m afraid. I arranged to meet my colleague and friend Brenda at 7am in order for us to have a good long walk around some of the park before we opened up the Bittern Information Point which we man as volunteers. It was a cool yet sunny start and we were hit by the chorus of birdsong as we made our way along Walton’s Walk towards Hooks Marsh. This choir was led by the distinct song of the Blackcap, one of the first of the warbler migrants to reach our shores for the summer. Blackcap in full song We were lucky with this chap as Blackcaps do like to annoy you as they sing from under the leaf cover of trees and then flicking to another point and repeating the game....