Lush growth

For mid-November, there is still an awful lot of healthy - and new - growth at Beddington Sewage Farm. The banks of the settling beds are still awkward to navigate because of knee-deep nettle, mallow, Fat-hen and Hemlock. The picture above is of Celery-leaved Buttercup, with quite a few plants still in good flower, mainly on the sludge lagoons.

Bird-wise the highlight was a Short-eared Owl that came in from the south-east, circled for 15 minutes, and then attempted to land before a thuggish gang of corvids saw it off the premises. Teal numbers have now risen to over 500 and make for an evocative visit, what with the whistling calls and the compact speeding flocks arrowing across the farm.

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