I have enjoyed my first short tour of some of the National Nature Reserves between home in the Shropshire Hills and the upper Thames valley taking in North Meadow, Chimney Meadows and Cothill and coming back via Foster’s Green Meadow and Chaddesley Woods in Worcestershire.
Chimney Meadows was a delightful reserve on the upper Thames and a great example of how National Nature Reserves can encourage landscape change for wildlife. Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire Wildlife Trust manage this site and have purchased other land around it, which is being restored using seed from the hay off of the NNR. So although the NNR is only 50ha, the land under conservation management is over 300ha.
On my visit, bird life abounded. Lapwing and curlew could be seen agitatedly chasing off the red kites that got too close to their nesting areas. It was great to see and hear these birds in the south of England. My walk along the river bank was delightful and was accompanied by the varied songs of an array of different warblers including sedge, Cetti’s, grasshopper, garden and blackcap.
The site, like many nature reserves, relies upon good grazing management, particularly of cattle, and this is what presumably had attracted the seven cattle egrets that greeted me on arrival early in the morning.
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