Conservation essential to keep these visitors happy

ONE of the reasons I love living in Bristol is the fact that we have so much green space and in particular our larger parks.

And one park in particular that I love spending as much time as I can with my pup Teddy, is Eastville Park. We spend hours on end ambling along the river, looking at the kingfishers darting up and down the river, mostly seeing a blue flash as it dashes by at high speed, or even perched on a post near the weir. It’s very exciting to watch them diving into the river, catching fish, although I have often wondered how they eat when the river is flooded and running very fast.

And occasionally the otters make an appearance too, much to the delight of everyone. I have been exploring Eastville Park since I was a child with my best friend, Harry Phillips, and many people I know have too. I clearly remember seeing the American mink there too, back many years ago.

Over the years the park has evolved with the friends of Eastville Park group, who are a group of volunteers who really do care for the park, and also the Frome fairies, who gather monthly and remove all the debris from the river.

One of the great attributes of Eastville Park is the boating lake and I’m sure many of you reading this will remember the old boat house where you could hire a rowing boat or a paddle boat for an hour or so.

Now the boating has finished on the lake it’s pretty much left to wildlife to take over and over the years many non-native visiting birds on their migration stop off for a while.

Last year an American Wood duck was spotted and that caused a lot of excitement. Well, in the last couple of days people have been posting pictures of a visiting species of bird that lives in Norway, Asia and the Arctic circle, and north America; a duck called the goosander or also called the mer- ganser, four of them in fact.

They are the ultimate fish hunters as their beaks are serrated, hence their other name of sawbill duck. Their underwater speed and agility will match any fish.

This is exactly the reason why it is essential that our green spaces in Bristol are maintained as a wild habitat so that we continue to attract these beauties for their holiday destinations. www.steveengland.co.uk twitter@steveengland300