The North Wilds of Bedfordshire

  August has always been a month of tangible about-turn to me. A month where, at some generally unspecified point but often in about the third week, my focus shifts from non-avian to avian. I almost feel that before it my interest in birding has waned and will never get to where it was before, a feeling then completely dispelled, often within one brief moment.  This moment came at Gadsey Brook this year.  Gadsey is an interesting mix of mature gravel pit, still-worked sludge lagoon, pasture, scrub, riverine meadow, and marshy brook. Brilliant, I hear you say? Well...not really. It turns up birds, however it's bloody hard work that's not in proportion to the habitat's potential. So, it was a pleasure, on the 4th, to find two Black-tailed Godwits on the "sludge pool" (which at the right water level looks absolutely scary for waders) along with a really good local count of nine Green Sandpipers, busy amongst a decent number of loafing Lapwings. Also, one of the Green...

  Ever since my late Dad (who you'll certainly hear more about) took me for a mid-winter walk along the modest Oxfordshire footpath between Wantage and Letcombe Regis, and proceeded to repeat the next weekend, and the weekend after that, something clicked in my mind: I might have been young, but I was already fully on the local patch bus.  The familiarity of certain, often random and sometimes unremarkable, places in an oft-visited area gave great pleasure, mainly in the knowing that almost certainly no-one else gained any pleasure in their existence. Apart from, clearly, my Dad.  I christened the aforementioned area "the Brooks", and "the Brooks" had "the Patch" (ok, a Patch in a patch; I should have thought that through more...), a potentially absolutely brilliant area of dense shrubbery next to a reedbed.  Later came Lark Hill, which on the face of it was the most faceless piece of arable farmland you could ever find - "the Dip" (which tur...

You'll hear more about my patch for Odonata in north Bedford as I go on. In essence, it's a 1m-wide brook with lush emergent vegetation which always looked good, but until I actually dedicated time to recording, I could never know for sure. It's good. In fact, for this kind of limited, small-scale habitat, I reckon you'd be pushed to match it. Saying that, it's been a strange year - unexpected positives followed by bizarre, inexplicable drop-offs: 1. Beautiful Demoiselle : This is not a Bedfordshire insect; it never has been. The faster-flowing, stony-bedded watercourses that are the hallmark of the species' existence don't really exist in the county, while the more ponderous, sludgy types very much do. As a result, Beds is arguably amongst the best Banded Demoiselle counties in the UK. 2025 was a special year here at the Renhold Brook. Beautiful D was proven to be present for the first time, and prior to this was only really at Cranfield in Beds (and perhap...