Bushy Park Nature Diary - Summer

Well, summer is nearly over and I’ve once again come to the conclusion that I’m not very good at keeping a regular blog! With the onset of autumn I need to make a renewed effort to explore and share the world around me, so consider this the first step…

The summer of Covid-19 has been an unusual one, but there have also been a lot of opportunities for self-reflection, insight and discovery. I’m heartened by the number of people who have used this time as an opportunity to reconnect with their local area and the wildlife in it, even if a few people seem to have reconnected with their local open spaces by setting them on fire. Everyone has been trying to guess at what “The New Normal” will look like. I’m not going to do that because, as with everything around Covid-19, I don’t think anything is certain. I do have a lot of hope though that with a renewed interest in the natural world, more people will be spending time in nature, and hopefully doing so responsibly.

So what have I discovered this summer? Well most of my forays into the wild have been within a one hour drive of London, and more often than not they’ve centred around the wonderland of Bushy Park. The Park has been very busy and there have been problems, particularly with anti-social behaviour at night, not great news for me as someone who often likes to walk in there in the evening. As the pubs reopened and more services have restarted things have started to quieten down in there, but for a while we weren’t able to access the park at night, which was frustrating but at least I’m able to head further afield too. Chobham Common (For nightjars), Ranmore Common (For Perseid meteors) and Box Hill (For orchids) are all regular spots for a summer evening stroll, and continuing this habit is something Mrs Lawston and I are keen on for the post-Covid world.

Grey Heron in Bushy Park

May brought a big surprise for me with a first for the park and only the second time I’d actually seen one – we heard and spotted a cuckoo! They aren’t unknown in the outer Royal Parks but in the nine years I’ve lived in the area I’ve never heard one, so it was quite a surprise to be rambling across the grasslands and hear the iconic sound of the male cuckoo. At first we thought it was someone’s phone but it swiftly became apparent that it was a real actual cuckoo, so we headed along the little wood that lines the fence along the western side of the park, getting ever closer to the bird. Finally Rachel spotted it at the top of an oak tree just as it flew off in the direction of the reedbeds. Cuckoos are brood parasites, laying their eggs in other bird’s nests, and they fly up from Africa every Spring to Europe to find unsuspecting birds to foist their young on. Reed warblers are a favourite, and there are some patches of reedbed along the Longford River behind the tree belt we saw the bird in.

Oak Processionary Moth caterpillars

June means only one thing to me in Bushy Park – Oak Processionary Moths! These invasive nasties have caterpillars which are covered in hairs which cause severe irritation to the skin and the airways, leading to breathing problems. As if Covid-19 wasn’t enough to contend with! The caterpillars troop around the trunks and branches of the oak trees in a procession, hence their name, and they make large nests in the trees full of these toxic hairs. My role as a volunteer is to survey all the oaks in a designated area of the park and report the locations of trees infested with the caterpillars. It’s always fun, although the more successful I am, the worse it is in terms of the outbreak. The Royal Parks send people in full PPE up to take the nests down, so I’m not in too much danger of coming into contact with the hairs. I very much value being able to contribute to this work and to give something back to the park that gives me so much, so I look forward to doing it again next year. Hopefully social distancing guidelines will be relaxed by then but the Oak Processionary Moth’s caterpillar is something you don’t want to get too close to anyway!

Comet NEOWISE blazes a trail across the dawn sky

July brought with it a spectacle that I haven’t seen since 1997 – a naked eye comet. Comet NEOWISE was the first decent northern hemisphere comet since Hale-Bopp way back at the end of the 90s. Although NEOWISE wasn’t anywhere near as spectacular, it was clearly visible from Bushy Park and I got superb views of it from Ranmore Common on my first socially distanced astronomy meet-up. The most memorable encounter was my first – the comet had just passed perihelion (Closest approach to the sun) and had swung round to be visible in the northern hemisphere in the morning sky. It being July this meant getting up at 3am to be able to see it. I wasn’t quite sure if I could be bothered but I woke up dutifully, took a look out the front window and was thrilled to discover that I could clearly see it. I gathered up my camera gear and headed for the park where I was able to get some photos of the comet before the pre-dawn glow swamped it. Even more impressive were the noctilucent clouds that were hanging over the northern horizon – these are ice clouds high up in the atmosphere that are lit by the sun even when it’s below the horizon, so they glow eerily in the summer skies when all the angles line up well. Normally you’d have to travel a long way north to see them (I’ve only ever seen them before in Orkney) but some quirk of the weather meant that we could see them down here. All in all a thrilling hour of astronomy before collapsing back into bed for a couple of hours.

Finally we get to August. I’m not a big fan of the last month of summer. Everything is running out of steam after summer proper but it hasn’t quite started to turn to those beautiful autumn colours. Oppressive heat was also a problem at the start of the month, followed by torrential rain from mid-month. Once again we confined ourselves to home, venturing out after dark when the weather had cooled down. Our favourite activity is to head to an area where the little owls live and to sit on a bench enjoying a decaf coffee from a flask, listening to the birds shriek and occasionally seeing one swoop over the long grass. It’s the perfect antidote to the heat when the weather is unbearable, and a wonderful way to spend an evening. So while I might not want to sit in a pub right now, and I’m not sure I fancy sitting in a cinema in my face mask for a few hours, I’ve come to cherish the simple pleasure of enjoying the beauty on my doorstep.

As always, stay safe, keep wearing your mask and maintaining physical distancing and I’ll see you on the other side in the “New Normal” where hopefully we can all go for a hygienic pint!