Crossing the County Border

On Sunday, we decided to venture outside the boundaries of Cambridgeshire into nearby Bedfordshire. We had good reason – to visit The Lodge in Sandy. You would expect some great wildlife spotting opportunities at the headquarters of the RSPB, and The Lodge does not disappoint. While I work in an office block next to a busy road, the lucky people who work at the RSPB headquarters are situated in the Swiss Cottage or the eponymous Lodge on a 180 hectare nature reserve. Popping out at lunchtime to get some fresh air would certainly be more interesting here.

It was a bright, dry, cold day with just a gentle breeze and a few innocuous clouds in the sky. Wrapping up warm, we set off from the car park on a path flanked on the right by acidic heathland dotted with silver birches and pines, both young and mature, and on the left by the road down to the Lodge building and, in the distance, sparse woodland.

To our surprise, we were immediately met by a swarm of midges. We didn’t expect to see those in such cold weather! Along the side of the path was an abundance of dense gorse bushes, resplendent with yellow coconut-scented flowers. The ground to the side was carpeted by a thick covering of dead bracken and creeping brambles.

As we continued down the path we entered woodland consisting mainly of mature silver birches, together with a few pines and oaks. The calls of blue tits and great tits chimed from the canopies above. Pieces of deadwood were scattered to the sides of the unmade-up footpath, providing homes for many of the insects on which the birds here like to feast.

One thing I have become fascinated by while writing this blog is lichen. I find the variety of its colours and textures strikingly beautiful and intriguing. Plus, it’s a wonderful symbiotic partnership between fungus and algae or cyanobacteria – and that in itself is very cool. My plan over this year is to learn how to identify some different types of lichen so that I can put some more knowledge behind my enthusiasm. In this particular woodland, many of the silver birches were adorned with a mint green lichen that had a texture which looked like thick spiders’ web. I’d love to know if anyone can identify it correctly.

Following the pine needle and oak leaf layered path, we soon came to the reserve’s hide. I absolutely love hides. In the midst of our busy, loud, technology filled day-to-day lives, hides are oases of tranquility. They provide a place where strangers can happily sit together quietly, united by the same passion for wildlife, watching nature at its most natural.

At first, we could only see the blue tits and great tits which we had heard earlier, together with a couple of blackbirds. However, as time went on, more and more species emerged from the surrounding heath to eat from the feeders and splash about in the two ponds in front of the hide. We saw male and female blackbirds and coal tits come to partake in the feast. A robin proudly hopped onto the scene, showing off his impressive red breast. A green woodpecker sat on a tree in the distance and a couple of chaffinches bounced around on the ground under the feeders in the hope of catching food that had dropped.

As I watched one of the feeders, I noticed a small head pop round from behind it. A great spotted woodpecker must have been sitting there, concealed, for some time, but now he was moving round and I was able to get a good view of him. He seemed perfectly happy sitting there, pecking away at the seeds, while nuthatches and blue tits swept in intermittently to eat next to him.

Usually, Andrew takes the photos while I scribble notes about what I’ve seen, but this time I decided to give the camera work a go. To my delight, I was given a wonderful test subject in the form of a pheasant who ambled calmly into my frame. Despite his slow pace, he hardly stopped for a second and his incessantly bobbing head proved a challenge to photograph. However, his scintillating feathers were a joy to capture. I have always thought that pheasants are beautiful birds but concentrating on this one brought it home to me how striking their lucent crimson cheeks and glistening sapphire necks are.

As I was altering the shutter speed, I heard an excited whisper spread around the hide. Looking out, I saw a muntjac deer pusillanimously drinking from the further pond. He looked slightly wary, as deer often do, but kept contentedly licking his lips in between drinks. While he eagerly lapped at the pond, blackbirds and redwings landed beside him and paddled messily, but he did not flinch. Eventually, something spooked him and he fled. At that time we decided we should move too to make sure we could have a walk around the reserve before the daylight faded.

On our walk away from the hide we were accompanied by the strident squawks of jays and ravens. Perhaps they too had seen the buzzard circling above. The buzzard floated seemingly effortlessly over the heath land below, searching for his next victim.

At intervals along the ground we noticed that there lay the crushed remains of bird pellets containing beetle wing cases. They were impressively large and the wing cases surprisingly intact despite having been in a bird’s gullet.

Our attention was quickly diverted above us by the sound of birds landing on a tree. As our eyes adjusted to the glare from the low sun we realised that a group of about thirty lesser redpolls had settled in the canopy of a silver birch. Their scarlet foreheads and brown striped wings make them distinctive, but in addition to their physical appearance, you may notice their unusual upside-down feeding method.

We continued along the heather flanked path, spotting more beetle wing laden pellets, and then descended gently towards the ruin of a small moss-capped stone wall. Fungi grew copiously in its damp crevices. Beech masts lay amongst the heather, having fallen from the mature beech trees towering above.

Appropriately, considering the name of the nearest town to the reserve, the ground around this area is particularly sandy, to the point that you could imagine you were on a beach if it weren’t for the abundant heather and pine trees.

The sand slipped away under our feet as we ascended out of the basin with the sound of hooting woodpigeons and squeaking nuthatches accompanying us. Nest boxes of differing sizes lined a number of the trees which flanked the path out of the dip, providing homes for a range of birds.

One obvious feature of the foliage around here is the presence of rhododendron bushes. I remember how, some years ago, I visited this reserve and saw a sign asking for volunteers to help them remove rhododendron bushes. I thought that ‘Rhododendron Remover’ would be a fantastic role to put on a CV! Of course, there was a serious reason for this request for volunteers – rhododendron is an invasive species and diminishes biodiversity in the areas where it takes hold. Although they may look pretty when in bloom, there’s a darker side to these innocent looking bushes.

We advanced further up the hill, past impressive hollies reaching about 25 feet into the sky, and arrived at the remains of a sandstone quarry. The sides of the quarry have eroded over time, leaving a tree balancing on the edge with its great roots exposed. The startling amber tone of the rock contrasted sharply with the slate hue of the darkening wintry sky.

Leaving the quarry, we ascended further until we came back out onto the flat land next to the Lodge. On our way back to the car park we couldn’t resist popping back into the hide where we saw a cheeky grey squirrel trying to steal food from the bird feeders, and a tiny wren hopping delicately around the nearest pond.

If it weren’t for the swiftly escaping light, we could have stayed there for hours more. However, it was clear that the birds were starting to go to bed and that seemed like a good signal for us to leave too.