It was dark, dank and chilly when I left home and drove to Rickmansworth, and by the time I arrived it had been raining steadily for 10 minutes.
I sat in the car bemoaning my luck and wondering what I was doing here so early on this wet Friday morning.
I must admit that I sat in my warm, dry car for 5 minutes and contemplated just turning round and heading home. However, I decided that would make me just a fair-weather Friend of Stocker’s Lake and not a proper Friend, so out I got and put on my boots, cap and waterproof coat.
Almost immediately I had a reason to believe that things might not be that bad. The first birds I invariably see are either pigeons, magpies or mallards. The first one this morning was a Jay, though it flew off before I had even grabbed my camera.
Then having walked down the canal and arrived at the entrance to Stocker’s Lane I decided to have a quick look from the water bank to the immediate right, where I was treated to a glimpse of the iridescent blue of a kingfisher as it sped off. Again, too fast for me and the camera.
The third sign was that the rain stopped and things brighten up.
I went on to see lots of tits around the feeder by Kingfisher Hide; coal tits, great tits and long-tailed tits. I think I also saw a siskin.
They were then joined by a greater spotted woodpecker.
I silently mouthed a thank you to whichever Friend of Stocker’s Lake had recently topped on the food.
As previous reader’s will know I see plenty of grey herons around the lake, mostly by the water’s edge or flying overhead. They are nearly always solitary.
So to see two together in a field was unusual but it didn’t take me long to realise that this was a mating couple looking out for twigs and small branches to line their nest.
As one flew off and I began to anthropomorphize the events. I imagined what the conversation could have been. The female heron saying “Now I only want the best for the nest, good fresh twigs not old ones which will just snap” and the other male heron saying “Yes, dear” and muttering quietly to himself, “Does she think I’ve never done this before?”
And looking back i realised how many other pairs of birds i had seen - the long-tailed tits, a couple of pairs of Goldeneye, a two parakeets
So all in all while the weather had been foul/fowl it ended up a good day as a Friend of Stocker’s Lake.
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