ALL CHANGE!
around your neck, so we left the ducks to it and moved on. As we headed back to the main path, James – now using Leica’s new Trinovid HD binoculars – spotted a flicker as something darted between the branches: a Nuthatch. With an unidentified insect in its beak, it strutted along, showing off its Spiderman-like ability to walk upside-down along the limbs of a tree. Almost more remarkable than its defiance of gravity was the obliviousness of other park visitors to this remarkable sight. Higher above us, a Sparrowhawk also passed unnoticed by the masses, and a group of Ringnecked Parakeets squawked unheeded as they leapt from branch to branch. The birders also noted a Jay, sitting silently in the shadows on a low-hanging bough only a couple of feet above the heads of the crowds. Soon the group reached the heart of the flood defence works. Where a pool known as the ‘Model Boating Pond’ had shimmered for years, there was now bare earth. Wire fencing and corrugated Covering approximately 791 acres, Hampstead Heath is just over four miles north of Buckingham Palace. It is one of London’s largest green spaces, and until this year, one of its wildest in appearance. Like much of our landscape, however, the undulating grassy slopes and mature woodlands that crown the hills of north London are actually the result of careful management over many years. If you scrape away the green surface of the fields and ponds, you find the skeleton of Victorian landscape engineering on a grand scale. And scraping away the surface is exactly what has been done by the council recently as part of a £20 million-plus scheme to shore up the area’s flood defences by strengthening the earthen banks that act as dams for the largest ponds. The results are not pretty in aesthetic terms and have caused controversy. The effects for local bird and animal life have yet to be seen. With plans to install new reedbeds and increase wetland areas, though, there are hopes for some improvements. A Sparrowhawk also passed unnoticed by the masses and a group of Ring-necked Parakeets squawked unheeded
metal panels were everywhere and a scraped, dredged pit was where the pond had once been. “It looks alarming to a lot of locals, but the birds don’t have the same aesthetic standards,” said Bill. “Some days you’ll see half-a-dozen Wheatears here enjoying the mud. They found all sorts of things when draining it. One of the strangest was a car! Goodness only knows how long it had been down there, or how it got there – but there it was.” The birders weren’t the only ones gawping. A Magpie alighted on a fence panel and eyed the diggers beadily. “Fences are one of the simplest but most effective things you can put up to make it easier to see birds in a place like this,” Bill grinned. “Birds love anything to perch on. It doesn’t have to be a blooming great panel like that – just a post and a rail will do. They left a piece of fencing up in a patch of woodland here after a previous project a few years ago and it worked wonders for sightings there. “This lot have promised ‘environmental mitigation’ after they’re done. Only time will tell how much they’ll do, and whether they’ll get it Bill talking Alan and James through the birds they are seeing on Hampstead Heath The binoculars used by Bill on the birdwatching trip – complete with BTO sticker! Perhaps an unexpected exotic in the heart of London