Post-industrial landscape

Another day of report writing, punctuated by a dogs walk along the river and a short trip to Orton Pit, where Chris was taking his final aquatic invertebrate sample for his third year research project. He nearly completed the work yesterday, but ran out of light. It's a sure sign of autumn when the light goes before exhaustion sets in...

While he was taking his sample I had a quick wander with the camera, but it was very windy and the only birds around were fast flying pigeons and corvids. At the end of our trip we saw a buzzard, kestrel and sparrowhawk all circling close together, the two smaller birds trying to chase off the buzzard, but they were much too far away to photograph.

So today I've gone for a view west over the nature reserve. The strange mounded topography is a result of the ridge-and-furrow method of extracting the Oxford Clay for brick making. This has left rows of ponds, with piles of clay spoil between. Nobody quite knows how many ponds there are, and it varies with changing water level, but it is thought to be somewhere over 350.

The golden grass which is catching the afternoon sunlight is wood small-reed, a very frequent colonist of the Oxford Clay, which can form very extensive stands. The grassland it forms is not usually very species-rich but it is the habitat for several very rare species of moth, at least one of which occurs on the reserve.