London's Disneyland for nature

It was a glorious start to my morning shift last week at the London Wetland Centre.

Beating the bounds of my patch, nature was doing all it could be heard, though not necessarily seen.

The reed beds were the site of a warbler stand-off.

The Cetti’s Warblers had been loyal and stayed put there all year. They were most put-out to have to share their home with the upstarts back from Africa.

Their explosive machine-gun song seemed to be aimed explicitly at the Reed Warbler’s rhythm and blues riffs and the Sedge Warbler’s jazz extemporisations.

The returning blackcaps and chiffchaffs just added to the kerfuffle.

But what a joyous kerfuffle!

Both seen and heard were the sand martins rattling overhead. Their on-site Airbnb, the nest bank lovingly crafted for them, looked very much booked out for the season. The martins were bringing nesting material into the holes at a dizzying speed.

Of the wading birds on-site there were only a pair each of lapwing and oystercatchers left over from the winter. But they were making their presence felt in a big way with ear-splitting ‘pee-wits’ from the one and piping ‘kleeps’ from the other.

And if that wasn’t enough, gigantic marsh frogs were laughing at each other in chorus at an incredible decibel level across the wetland.

And everywhere was green, so green that it hurt the eyes.

As Jane Austen said of spring in Mansfield Park, it is the “season which cannot, in spite of its capriciousness, be unlovely”.

Not every one was so impressed however.

I bumped into some of the regular birders. They greeted me with a “it’s a bit quiet today” or “there’s not much about”.

What they were referring to was the lack of rare or vagrant birds to add to their lifetime lists. Nothing that had been blown off course that day and found itself in Barnes rather than the Baltic or the Bay of Biscay.

We smiled and exchanged niceties.

But what I really wanted to do was to shake them by the shoulders.

“Where is your inner child? Where is your wonder at all this magnificence?”

I should have dragged them over to the school group nearby, soaking up every word from an educator colleague about why wetlands are such a magnet to all the birds and insects that appeared to be literally bursting at the seams all around.

What struck me about the London Wetland Centre when I first volunteered there were the similarities it bore to somewhere else I used to work - Disneyland Paris.

When I first took up a leadership role there, some of my right-on friends were horrified. I had joined a quasi-cult, in their eyes, a manufactured and artificial dystopia. But I loved it and still take great pride in the creativity and professionalism that were behind ‘the Disney Experience’.

And I feel the same way about the London Wetland Centre.

Of course, I enjoy being in the wild margins of our islands, where nature is left to its own devices. The tidy walkways, bright clear signage and the attractive information boards of the place I work in, would be a real turn-off on my tramps through the post-apocalyptic landscapes of the Thames Estuary, for example.

But here, just five miles from Trafalgar Square, it’s just right.

Are we in London? Or are we in Suffolk in a scene painted by Constable?

Both Disney and WWT (the organisation behind the London Wetland Centre) have visitor attractions to run and they both do it brilliantly.

And in the middle of London, it’s not about landscape-level nature restoration. Rather it’s about creating an oasis, that both birds and human beings can access and appreciate.

And on glorious spring days like this one, to luxuriate and glory in.