Get off my pond!

Yesterday featured a meander around Ogden Water a Yorkshire Water reservoir managed as a country park by Calderdale Council. And the Council do a good job of managing - we met a litter picker on the path so they're keeping up to it at the weekend and the place is well kempt with paths and fences right for the rural setting. And we didn't mind too much that it was spitting with rain and rather breezy. Especially since in the woods that's broken up through the trees.

So there we were meandering through, breathing in the great smell of a damp pine wood, listening to the chaffinches shouting their heads off (it always amazes me that such a loud noise can come from such a tiny body) and we arrive at the little pond beyond the bridge at the head of the reservoir. Last time we were there it was a lovely domestic scene with mum and half-a-dozen ducklings swimming about in the still water.

This time it was a different picture, the cute bliss of the ducklings had gone and was replaced with this chap:

And when a couple more mallard drakes arrived his response was:

Get off my pond!

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Swans at Mistley, railway bars and a little bit of Essex

If you've never seen the swans at Mistley on the Essex marshes, you've missed a treat. Indeed a treat that's fast disappearing. The basin at Mistley used to feature one of Europe's largest herds of swans - in the 1950s well over 1000 swans regularly gathered to enjoy the treat of a food rich location. The swans gathered at Mistley because of the maltings on the river - the water used in the works was rich in the residues from the malt making for a great feeding ground.

Today the swan numbers are down to a couple of hundred - when the picture above was taken a couple of years ago, there were only around 50 or 60 pairs in the basin. Some of this is down to the management of the river but it is mostly, I suspect, because the maltings have closed and the swans get get better pickings elsewhere. The sight of a sea of white birds from bank to bank that I saw on my first visit in 1980 is no more and will likely not return.

The Essex marshes are a pretty special area (although they get more workaday and less special as you head towards Harwich) with places like Mistley and Manningtree making for an attractive location - Manningtree used to have a great railway bar - privately run and serving maybe the best range of beers in the town. A bit like the maltings and the swans this is now gone - replaced by a plastic cafe.

Essex gets a bad name - one of the last places, the people of which can be bad-mouthed, made a joke of and ridiculed with seeming impunity. Not that they mind of course - after all they made up most of the jokes themselves. And what's wrong with 5-in stilettos and a soft-top motor anyway? At least Essex folk are honest about aspiring to these things! Anyway, the area around Mistley is lovely and worth a visit where the locals will, of course, remind you that Constable country is mostly in Essex rather than Suffolk. And that it's perfectly OK to shoot and eat ducks!

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