Tag Archives: Bedfordshire Cambridgeshire and Northamptonshire Wildlife Trust

Birdsong-bathing

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After visiting in May last year, I made a trip to our local wildlife trust’s Strawberry Hill reserve not long after dawn this morning.

I’ve written about the site previously including how the 350 acre former arable farm has been left rewild since the 1980s and demonstrates how, if left alone, nature can recolonise land with remarkable success.

The purpose of my walk around the site today was to experience the sound of the dawn chorus as full as I’ve ever heard it in the UK. I’ve been thinking about doing this ever since I did the same last May and was astonished by the richness and volume of the sounds.

As I walked around the site, it was like bathing in the birdsong; completely shutting out all other sounds and focusing purely on the calls and songs coming from the sky, trees and scrub that surrounded me. I spend an intense, yet peaceful, two hours walking along the paths and rides through the site allowing the sounds to wash over me.

Here’s a video showing just a small fragment of the soundscape I experienced:

One of the main reasons for going was to hear the call of nightingales. Last year I heard seven singing males, much to my amazement and joy. Today they were a lot harder to find and, when I did, they seemed to be much deeper into the scrub, away from the paths. I heard distant snippets of their calls occasionally and only once did I find one close enough to hear its song clearly. This was the only disappointing part of the visit and I hope to go back to see if I can have more luck, perhaps in the evening, to try a different time.

If I can’t return this spring, I have no doubt that I will now spend the next year dreaming of this place and longing to have the opportunity bathe in the dawn chorus again.

Nightingales at Strawberry Hill

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After a lovely first visit to Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire & Northamptonshire Wildlife Trust’s reserve at Strawberry Hill a few weeks ago, I retuned today to see what summer migrants I could find; I wasn’t disappointed!

We arrived just after 7:00am on a slight chilly but very sunny May morning. We could see our breaths as we left the car behind but the sun brought warmth whenever it shone through the trees.

As soon as we stepped onto the footpath into the reserve we were enveloped by the rich cacophony of spring bird song. The voices were so numerous and so loud that it was at first quite difficult to tell one from another. Chiff chaffs, song thrushes, blackbirds, blackcaps, garden warblers, great tits and robins were all singing at the tops of their voices and together creating a wave of sound that was almost overwhelming. The senses were further bombarded by the sweet smell of blossom, particularly from the swathes of white hawthorn blooms throughout the reserve.

As we walked on further, the sound did not decrease and the deeper we ventured the richer and more intense the sounds became. It was not until I stopped to take a picture of a dew-dusted spider’s web that the spring soundscape reached its peak. As I knelt down as sweet, fluting and trilling song came from a nearby bush; a nightingale was calling from deep within its thorny cover. We stopped for a little while to listen to its lovely song. At times, it was quite hard to decipher its call from all the others, especially as a loud song thrush started up nearby but it really is an unmistakable song when you become attuned to it.

As we walked on we came across other birds that had made their way here for the summer with willow warblers, grasshopper warblers, lesser and greater whitethroats, and, often the star of spring, a couple of cuckoos.

However, today, the real stars were the nightingales of which we found seven singing alongside the footpaths and bridleways through the reserve. They were the main reason I wanted to go, although I had hoped for turtle dove too. They far exceeded my expectations and it was a drag to leave them behind.

The experience this morning was everything I’d hoped for in visiting this rewilded site. It was full of wildlife at the height of the breeding season, an example of what is possible if we give nature space and tome, and just let it return on its own terms.

Strawberry Hill is a soul-liftingly magical place and I can’t wait to make another visit.