Friday, November 08, 2013
My history of the Dorney floods
A damp miserable day inspired me to write a short account of the flood in the north-east corner of Dorney Common (DC), and the flood in the enclosed field behind Eton Wick (EW).
DC was the first of the floods to appear and although I can't say exactly when that was, it was first mentioned on this blog on June 25, 2012. My first mention of EW (and a photo of the two floods) appears on July 16. I remember hoping that the floods would last into autumn 2012 for wader migration; in fact they've lasted for two autumns - in total, a year and four months.
DC has dried up at least twice, leaving that corner of the common in a bit of a mess. The grass doesn't seem to grow back very well and the area that was under water is covered mostly in thistles. EW has grown and shrunk with the weather but has never, so far, disappeared completely.
The floods have attracted a good selection of waders: redshank, snipe, little egret, common sandpiper, green sandpiper, dunlin, little stint, ringed plover, pectoral sandpiper, ruff, lapwing, golden plover and black-tailed godwit.
Maybe EW even became a breeding site. These redshanks were seen in June with a chick (possibly two). The parents were very wary; when I appeared, although distant, they began to alarm-call, and the chick ran from the water and hunkered down in the grass.
In June this year DC dried up for the second time. It returned and dried up again. It's back now, and this shot was taken a couple of days ago when two green sandpipers (only just visible) landed briefly on the far shore.
This was the year when pools sprang up in the chalky downs of West Berks and Oxfordshire, so a flood in an often waterlogged corner of a low-lying common shouldn't come as too much of a surprise. Yet it did. A nice one, too.
// posted by Christine @ 1:59 PM 
