WALMSLEY SANCTUARY

 

 Walmsley Reserve

One of our favourite bird-watching sites in Cornwall is the Walmsley Sanctuary near Wadebridge. It is 20 hectares of wetland and an important overwintering site for waders and all kinds of wildfowl.

It was bought with a legacy from Dr Walmsley by the Cornwall Birdwatching & Preservation Society back in 1939.

It is situated where the River Amble runs into the Camel Estuary. In 1971 in order to prevent flooding of the pretty village of Chapel Amble a little way up the Amble, a dam was built where the river joins the Camel and the Amble was canalized. This turned the Amble salt marshes into seasonally wet grazing meadows and efforts by the BWPS (Birdwatching & Preservation Society)to maintain the water levels in the reserve were only partially successful.

However, in 1991 the Rivers Authority  re-instated the original route of the Amble and by building bunds and digging scrapes, made the reserve what it is today: a series of permanent pools and islands of rushy emergent vegetation, attractive not only to the overwintering and passage birds but also to residents like Reed Bunting and dragonflies in the summer. By careful management of the water levels the reserve has developed into the valuable site we know today.

 

The Sanctuary as it is today, looking from the Tower hide.

 

There are three hides, the original one overlooking the western end of the reserve, a fine 4metre-high tower hide opened in 1999 which is only open to key-holders and a third hide ( the Burnière Hide) which  is reached across two fields  over the road. This hide overlooks the extensive flats of the Camel Estuary.

 

Looking from old (public) hide at western end of the reserve. (see the heron?)

 

Looking across the mudflats of the Camel Estuary from the Burniere hide (public)

 

 

Huge flocks of Golden Plover can be seen.

Looking along hedge from tower hide.

The feeders beside the tower hide attract tits, finches and this Greater Spotted Woodpecker.

 An interesting mix of ducks and waders is to be seen from the hides in winter, especially at high water when more flocks of Lapwings, Golden Plover, Curlew and Black-tailed Godwits fly in to roost away from the rising tide in the estuary. It is always worth looking through the flock of Canada Geese feeding in the meadows alongside the wetland for the occasional White-fronted Goose, and when walking across to the Burnière Hide, the overwintering Mute Swans in the meadows alongside the estuary are often joined by one or two Whooper Swans. 

 

When you get your eye in,  there are numerous Snipe, almost invisible in the vegetation.

 

 

Spoonbills may be seen in the winter.

 

 

Little Egret, becoming quite common in the last 40 years.

 From my field notes:

A perfect autumn morning. Deep silence, no wind, cumulus beginning to build up in the clear blue sky above the marshes. Canada Geese floating peacefully; Mallard and Teal sailing placidly; none of the feverish activity of spring when they rush and bustle after each other. Throaty purr of Moorhen in the reeds; Herons anchored in the wet meadows beyond.

A couple of Swallows flit past, then suddenly there are about fifty dipping and skimming over the water; mostly House Martins now. Tony thinks he sees Sand Martins among them. And as quickly, they are gone.

As we sit, the cloud is increasing and a little breeze is ruffling the water and swaying the rushes. Was that the signal for the Curlews who had been standing motionless, knee-deep at the edge of the pool to get up with brief bubbling calls and head off towards the sandbanks of the estuary, exposed by the falling tide?

A Dabchick with round fluffy stern, potters alongside the reedy margin. He isn’t bothering to dive just now, unlike the Cormorant fishing intently in the further pool, under water more than above. Perhaps he’s having to look long and hard for little fish.

Walmsley Sanctuary. Sep.22^nd 2016

Autumn day at Walmsley

Hoping for perhaps a Red Admiral in the Ivy, Redwings on the Haws or even a Red-legged Partridge, we set off for Walmesley Reserve yesterday morning on a glorious sunny day and a clear blue sky but very cold and a white frost.

No luck with the Red Admiral, or the Redwings (all the haws either stripped off all but one bush, or hadn't set this year) but as soon as we looked across the meadow by the bridge where we park, there among the black cattle, were no fewer than ELEVEN Cattle Egrets accompanying the cattle.

 

 

Cattle Egret

We then went and sat in the corner hide. The sun was shining in that corner quite warmly and soon the white frost was gone off the herbage on the bank where a heron was standing apparently motionless and seemingly oblivious of us close-by. It wasn't that motionless as in fact over the half hour or so that we were there, it imperceptibly shortened its long cranked neck till it was crouching, and once just stretched out and picked something small off the grass with the tip of its beak.

A moorhen walked tentatively across the ice on the pool in front of us flicking its black and white tail, the greenish lobes on its feet splayed out as it slipped a little.

A fox appeared to our left, picking its way delicately along the bank, zigzagging from the hedge to the water’s edge. We'd been watching a snipe probing the grass above the water, but it had melted away as the fox approached. By one clump of rushes the fox stopped and stared, stalking something like a cat will, then after an age, it reared up gently then pounced its front feet into the tuft, but it was out of luck and quietly resumed its walk. Its coat was rich russet in the sun and it trailed its white-tipped brush straight out behind, before it disappeared in dead ground over the bank and we made our way to the tower hide.

It had been a delightful, very English, little interlude, in sharp contrast to the foreign-looking impact of the cattle egrets we saw earlier.

There is some water now but it dried out in the summer draught. However, it enabled the easy cutting back of the emergent vegetation so a greater expanse of water will be seen when the rains eventually have an impact.

Oct31st’18

On another occasion we watched a heron’s struggle with an eel. He had been standing at the water’s edge, motionless when, with a sudden stab, he grabbed an eel, as stout and as long as his neck. We waited with baited breath, with suppressed football-crowd shouts of support, as he wrestled with it, trying to manoeuvre it into the right position to swallow it. He dropped it several times, but retrieved it; half-swallowed it and then brought it up again, the eel all the while struggling valiantly. In the end we didn’t know who we were rooting for, eel or heron! Eventually, the ell was safely swallowed. It must have still been alive. I wonder what that feels like?

Grey Heron

 

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