Back to the litter pit

In many ways it's depressing visiting this pit, it's out of the way, well naturalised, but neglected. It also holds carp so anglers visit it. I won't tar them all with the same brush, the ones I have spoken to despise the duck-shooting, fire-lighting litter-louts too. There is a faction that insists on leaving cans, bottles, bags and more behind. It's such a shame as the place is everything a nature reserve would be if I had my way - unmanaged with no hard paths, just tracks that people have beaten out over time that follow the contours of the land and are overgrown in places.

As soon as I arrived there were chasers and emperors to be seen, then damsels. Reed warblers were being as noisy as reed warblers can. I walked through a clump of birches that had obviously been planted by the landowner, whoever that is, to find a burnt mess of a bed that looked as if it had been used as a barbecue. Yet feet away there were dragonflies and warblers.

Round the corner in a bay choked with Canadian pondweed carp were basking and chasers chasing over the surface. A large dragonfly came and checked me out, but I couldn't get a shot of it nor a positive ID. On the other side of the bay rudd were swirling in gaps in the weed. Then the sun went in and the dragonflies disappeared.

Bordering the pit, beyond the dense reedbeds, is a wild meadow filled with vetch, trefoil and other colourful plants. This harbours butterflies and moths in abundance. Skippers were spotted and burnet moths. And by the edge of a small pit, not much more than a scrape in the ground but one that holds fish, a common blue was briefly seen. Just for long enough to get a ropey photo with the wrong settings before I put the flash on the camera. I didn't see it again... The blue was perched on a mares-tail, which is prolific round the small pit and the two ponds which are mere wet depressions that are drying out in the current heatwave.

On the other side of the big pit is another, smaller, one which is rapidly losing the open water as reeds encroach from the margins. In the land around this pit I managed to photograph a burnet moth and a small skipper. One of these days I'll have to spend more time at this place, not least to see if I can get some good shots of the many reed buntings that inhabit the area. If only it wasn't quite so accessible and litter-strewn it would be truly idyllic. Of course, if it was well managed and the lowlife excluded from it I'm sure it would end up becoming manicured like so many 'proper' nature reserves. Sometimes you can't win.