Wilding Walks: Dishley Pool

Dishley Pool, near Loughborough

While I do my best to make my small city garden friendly to insects and raw nature, local counties and boroughs are creating spaces with similar goals in mind. I recently visited one near Loughborough in the Midlands which used to be an old gravel pit. It's called Dishley Pool. 

It is not enormous, offering perhaps a 40 minute walk round the lake  but its mainly native trees and plants conceal the local built-up surroundings very effectively and provide a perfect environment for many water fowl, songbirds, birds of prey and, of course, the insects and tiny mammals that we are dangerously losing now. 

Gorgeous sky and trees reflected in this small lake

The day was sunny and the body of water reflected everything magically. The autumn trees were beginning to turn, we were surrounded by such things as blackberry bushes, nettles, wild scabious and other wildflowers, reeds, alder trees, ash, blackthorn, hawthorn and guelder rose bushes whose flowers are loved by butterfly larvae and whose bright red berries are eaten by birds.

A family of swans enjoying the sun

We went past two reflected ducks under a willow, a family of swans and a tiny, darting wren. There were coots and moorhens on the water.   If you sat for half an hour quietly, you would be  able to see a whole world in existence. 

Duck reflections

I am comforted to know that small initiatives like this are what can help to make a joined up community  of safe havens for wildlife, whereas so much agricultural land has killed off its creatures through the terrible use of pesticides.