Taking a Walk

Patrick Barkham

Way back in the mists of time – 1990, say – one species of heron lurked on the Somerset Levels. It was the big, grey one, angular ornament of suburban ponds and riverbanks all over. These days, if you wander through the Avalon Marshes with a keen eye, you might encounter seven species of heron.

Until I walked here with the naturalist Stephen Moss, I’m not sure I even knew there were seven heron species. But this is Moss’s local birdwatching patch and he knows they are all breeding as well. Our old faithful grey heron has been joined by the bittern, little bittern, little egret, cattle egret and great white egret. Most excitingly of all, last year the night heron – a truly beautiful, twilight-hued bird – bred on the marshes for the first time.

The arrival of these birds tells us that these ancient marshes are changing, rapidly. Lying between the Mendip, Blackdown and Quantock hills, this watery land was reclaimed from the sea by the medieval monasteries situated on island-like Glastonbury, Athelney and Muchelney. The folk of Somerset, ‘the land of the summer people’, moved livestock onto these marshes in summer before retreating to the hills for winter.

So these flat green marshes, gridded with ditches known as rhynes (pronounced reens), are a built environment, and our use for it is evolving. The peat-digging of the late 20th century is being supplanted by another industry: birdwatching. Shallow pools of old peat-diggings at Ham Wall are now a nature reserve. ‘Build it and they will come’ is Moss’s mantra, and this wetland habitat – which more resembles the Neolithic-era Levels – is ideal for water-loving birds and their admirers.

Birders flock here for the stupendous starling murmurations in early winter, and then come overwintering ducks and spring-breeding herons. Moss (who has launched tours of his local patch) pointed out the difference between diminutive teal (the males have yellow bottoms) and larger wigeon (with a yellow dusting to the head).

The Levels’ sense of space is refreshing but its sounds are particularly evocative: mysterious plops from within the rushes; the pig-like squeal of a water rail; the liquid thrashing of a cormorant beating its wings on the water during lift-off.

In spring, there are the bitterns, the males hunkered down in reedbeds, making their foghorn-like calls. While they are (literally) booming, other birds are faring less well. I admired a peewitting flock of 300 lapwing, once a taken-for-granted adornment of any country childhood.

A little elevation goes a long way in a flat landscape. The walk through Ham Wall is on a raised embankment of the old Somerset & Dorset Railway. Near the railway is the Sweet Track, a raised, wooden walkway, built around 3838BC, to cross the Levels. It’s named after a local farmer and peat-digger who discovered it. Later, I spot Sweets Peat and Science Museum; unfortunately, it is closed when I pass, but I’m sure it has strong views on the drastic decline of peat-digging on the Levels. Thirty years ago, when environmentalists sought to stop peat extraction, locals who profited from peat burned effigies of the conservationists. At least some locals will make money from the birds and naturelovers, now flocking to their marshes.

*You can potter along the railway line at Ham Wall nature reserve. For a more challenging half-day walk, park in the Hawk and Owl Trust car park north of Shapwick, head north and then right – east – onto the footpath along the old railway line at Shapwick Heath National Nature Reserve. Route-finding is easy: head due east towards the tea, cake and crystals of Glastonbury and its Tor.