Reservoir blogs

Reservoirs - or 'Rezziz' as in the birding slang - can leave me cold (and not just on freezing January mornings). Although I've seen some good birds on them, from American waders at Staines to a Surf Scoter on an unpronouncable Welsh one, I always arrive at a reservoir with a sinking heart.

Is it their lack of ambience? After all, 'a man made bowl of concrete filled with tap water' is hardly Rogersesque, is it. Especially those without any deviation in contour away from a square or a circle. No emergent vegetation. And thinking about it, no access. Maybe youthful memories of climbing over spiked metal fencing to try and get nearer to distant dots has played its part on my aversion to them.

And then there is their positioning. Always close to a motorway. Or an airport. Or industrial estate. Some of them creep me out by being vast banked beasts rising ominously above nearby housing estates, just waiting to burst themselves and take out the meddling humans in a tide of revenge. Personification? Me?

I have visited the odd reservoir which has been sympathetically landscaped and actually has trees around it, but they also seem to be crap for birds. No, reservoirs just can't win I'm afraid. I'd sooner kick around a bit of habitat with less birding potential just because it has some charm.

Did you see what I did with the post title by the way? This rubbish isn't just thrown together you know...

Comments

Parus said…
Agree with you regarding most rezziz... but, if for no reason other than to add further weight to the old "exception to every rule" cliche, I'd like to mention Abberton, Essex.

It's really rather good.
8 September 2011 at 14:09
Skev said…
We have lots of reservoirs here in Leics & Rutland, but all are more like big lakes. Rutland Water (SSSI) is a man made reservoir, and we have Eyebrook Res (SSSI), Cropston Res, Swithland Res (remember that Crag Martin!), Thornton Res, Blackbrook Res (SSSI), Saddington Res, Stanford Res ... all have obvious dams but otherwise fairly natural shorelines and certainly nothing comparable to the concrete bowls of eg Staines and Farmoor. I fully agree that these type of reservoirs are horrible. I've only been to Farmoor once (Franklin's Gull) - didn't feel compelled to go back. I've been to Staines a few times but always in conjunction with some other reason (eg Brown Shrike) or on a specific twitch (Wilsons Phalarope) - wouldn't go for the sake of it.
8 September 2011 at 20:13
Steve Gale said…
Parus: I went to Abberton once to look for a 'suspected' American Coot. needless to say it wasn't one.

Skev: you've got me going back through my notebooks - 9th Jan 1981 I visited Ravensthorpe Res, Pitsford Res, Cropston (2 Long-tailed Ducks) and Swithland. Never been back...
8 September 2011 at 20:57
Skev said…
You've not missed much in the last 30 years ....
8 September 2011 at 21:08
GeoffB said…
having watched the Walton ressies since 1995 decided this year not to bother & haven't missed it much at all -soulless concrete ...having said that it rewards the relentless patcher & Dave Harris has found some gems over the years
9 September 2011 at 10:09
Steve Gale said…
That's true Geoff, they do reward the diligent birder. Where are you spending most of your time now?
9 September 2011 at 13:40
GeoffB said…
been a bit of a gypsy and gone where the fancy takes me but mostly local sites in Surrey ...farmland around Malden Rushett...Oxshott Common ....Horton CP even been up to Canons a few times in recent weeks !
10 September 2011 at 10:30
Stewart said…
Hi Steve,

I cant imagine the hell that is 'doing the ressers'. I've read about Bill Oddie's exploits in the west midlands (Frankley and Bartley) and it saps the life force from me. Not only are the concrete bowls usually crap, you even get a bollocking off security for going there!

We have Kielder, Fontburn and Derwent ressers in Northumbs. They look more like scottish lochs and still dont get much but at least they aren't fenced off...
10 September 2011 at 17:18
Gavin Haig said…
I cut a few birding teeth on Staines and its neighbours. At the time I loved it. When drained they could suck waders from the sky like a hoover, and my Staines wader list is far better than my current patch - which includes an estuary and associated marshes. Walking the circumference of a snowy Queen Mother in a minor blizzard rewarded me with a London tick Lapland Bunting which ended up being twitchable. Might not sound like much, but such memories take me back to a happy time.

The climbing, occasional impalements and security-dodging were all part of the fun. Mind you, I was young. Not sure how much I'd enjoy it nowadays - I've probably been spoiled by the easy pickings down here.

I'm sure some concrete bowls really are rubbish, but many of those on the Thames fly-way certainly are not!
10 September 2011 at 21:34
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Goldfinches and Lavender

Image
We have three medium-sized Lavender bushes in our back garden. Throughout the summer the flowers (which last for several months) are a magnet for insects and give off a most restful aroma. As tempting as it is to cut the dead stems in the autumn, we always leave them, as we know that during the late winter we will get visitors to feed on the seed heads... This video was taken from the kitchen window this morning. We will normally see one or two birds over a few days, but have had up to 14 at once. We never tire of watching them. Lavender is a wonderful plant to have in the garden, with year round natural history benefits. So what are you waiting for? They are readily available at a garden centre close to you right now! There is an historic association with Lavender in this part of northern Surrey and south London. Lavender fields have been harvested for many years, with one particular field close to Woodmansterne being very popular with day trippers. A significant proportion o...
Read more

Welcome back!

Image
In November 2005 I purchased a pair of Swarovski 10x42 EL binoculars from The London Camera Exchange shop in Guildford, for the then princely sum of £899. These bins have served me well, with almost daily use in all types of weather, testing their durability to the maximum - salt water spray, deluges of rain, 38C temperatures, dust, dirt, slight knocks... and apart from the armour coating that had started to bubble and come away from the body, nothing to be alarmed about. Then, in the summer of 2022, I noticed that I had a problem when close focusing - the outer focusing wheel would lose grip and it would take me an age to regain a middle-ground distance of focus - plus, over the next few weeks this outer focusing wheel became loose. I resorted to the use of tape to keep it all in place, but realised that I had to do something about it in the long run. For a while I did consider buying a new pair - after all, they were then 17-years old - but they were still optically superb. It seemed...
Read more

A special day

In birding, timing can mean the difference between an average day in the field and that of a spectacular one. Good timing can be helped by reading the weather conditions correctly, or understanding local conditions but it is more often down to pure luck. In this case, I just got lucky... I had not visited Dungeness since March 2022, quite a gap for me. It was high time that I once more trod the shingle and my timing of a visit was down to several factors, mostly a personal liking for mid-late autumn but also because I needed to be at home until September 20th and could not make the journey south until then. I also chose to stay at the bird observatory for a few days rather than make it a day trip. All this conveniently found me stepping outside the observatory's back door in the breaking dawn of Sunday 22nd September, quickly making my way to the fishing boats, an area I prefer to stand to best appreciate any visible bird migration, an aspect of birding that I find exhilarating.  A...
Read more