11th: Bodenham Lake – Herefordshire

Probably the biggest thing I’ll take away from Bodenham Lakes is that the investment of time reaps its own rewards. Not only is this true with your children, but also for the time spent in a bird hide. When we first arrived at the lakes, the thing that struck us was the variety of habitats that this wetland provided, there were meadows, woodland (or maybe more accurately scrubland) and an orchard. We’d visited 3 or 4 wetland reserves, so (I’ll be completely honest here) as I was walking towards the bird hides, I did wonder if I was going to be able to find anything that was different enough to become a piece of art.

The first hide seemed to confirm that, with there being nothing to see other than a few mallard, graylag geese and a swan. I did spend quite a while there, doing a little sketching and seeing what would appear, but nothing did, in fact, most of the bird life wondered off. Maybe they didn’t like my sketches.

However, after walking to the further hide and spending a bit of time there, things started to come to life, and we got a bit of an insight into the lives of these fascinating birds. We saw graylag geese escorting their goslings across the lake. There was a bit of a battle taking place between a couple of coots (one was certainly the more aggressive, it even had a go at a canada goose, and won!). There was also a life and death struggle as a duckling, who had clearly got separated from its family, was trying to cross the lake and kept on being attacked by a crow. The good news is that all it did was bob itself below the water to escape. Sadly, we never saw the outcome as the duckling went out of sight.

In terms of artwork, I have an image of a line of goslings, with their 2 parents at the front and back, being escorted across the lake. We’ll see when we get back to the studio…