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August saw us enter the River Quaggy and the River Ravensbourne from a variety of parks and places. We started the month off by finishing our plastic clearance project in Lewisham town centre, you might actually be able to spot the fallen willow that we attended to from the bridge on Smead Way.

August has been a great month for spotting wildlife for our team! Not only have we seen a few grey wagtails and grey herons, including the very confident young heron pictured above, but we’ve seen three European Eels, at varying ages, during our sessions, Can you spot the eel in the last photo below? Another notable spot from one of our volunteers was the wonderful bullhead fish pictured below.

Do you know the owner of the red speckled egg below? It’s a Moorhen egg! This one was no longer viable as it was found on the riverbed, but from the number of moorhens we see on the rivers normally they seem to have enough hatch to allow for some to not make it. Do keep an eye out for nests on the rivers whilst you’re walking around– many of the poorly placed nests are from our Moorhen friends!

In the beginning of July we were still in the midst of the #3RiversCleanUp, so our wonderful volunteers were busy removing Himalayan balsam from our waterways. There was less balsam on the catchment than in previous years, testament to our volunteers fantastic efforts each year. We do have a few sites lower down the catchment, like Brookmill Park, which are hit harder by the invasive plant, but it’s still no match for our volunteer effort!

Later in the month, we started on a plastic clearance project in the middle of Lewisham town centre. Wading upstream from Cornmill Gardens we’d identified a fallen willow earlier in the year which needed a bit of maintenance so it didn’t block the whole width of the channel and to remove all the plastic detritus that had been caught by it. As a rule we don’t remove all deadwood/ fallen branches from the river as they create brilliant ecological niches for some animals to use. In this case a whole shoal of chub were sheltering behind it in the still water, perfect spawning and sheltered space for young fish.

Amongst the litter we do occasionally come across offerings to the river, in most circumstances we do leave these within the water as most are made of materials that eventually break down, and it’s wonderful to see people have that connection with our rivers. Unfortunately we do sometimes find plastic offerings, or items within plastic bags that need to be removed for the health of the river.

First up in June, our team of volunteers tackled the weir in Ladywell Fields, next to the Kenneth White Bridge and hospital. At this time of year the water level is low enough to allow us safe access onto the gabions to clear any obstructions caught on the weir itself. The larger area of branches and brash on the side gets removed by the Environment Agency periodically.

Heading downstream and through the secondary channel we found this old Sainsbury’s reward card which expired in Dec 1999! Shows how long plastics will remain in our environment and waterways.

Elsewhere in the catchment, the lovely riverfly monitoring volunteers Tom and Julia were in the middle field in Ladywell fields performing a kick sample.