The Dagenham Corridor can be enjoyed on foot at any time of year during daylight hours. All access points onto the Dagenham Corridor consist of a squeeze barrier and many also have RADAR accessible gates.
In the heart of Eastbrookend Country Park, the Discovery Centre is the focal point for visitors to the Dagenham Corridor. A self-guided, circular nature trail, which begins and ends at the Discovery Centre, provides an easy way to explore some of the surrounding woodland and lakes. Families can enjoy finding the marker posts along the route and taking rubbings of the local wildlife species as they walk round.
Wildlife
There is a great variety of wildlife in the area including assortment of mammals, birds, bees and butterflies.
Birds
Skylarks are becoming rare, probably because of the chemicals used by farmers. Eastbrookend and The Chase are chemical free zones which means visitors have plenty of opportunity to listen out for the music of the skylarks.
During the summer months the scrubland provides valuable feeding and nesting habitat for small birds such as the blackcap. Eastbrookend has also proved to be a good breeding ground for lapwings.
The winter berries that adorn most bushes attract hungry birds such as fieldfares and redwings that fly all the way from the Arctic to feast at Eastbrookend. Another bird often seen on the lookout for food is the kestrel, which is a common sight along woodland edges where
they nest and hunt. You may notice their fan-shaped tail as they hover over rough, open grassland, using their razor-sharp vision to catch unsuspecting prey – usually voles and other small mammals – which they strike from above.
Woodpeckers are regularly seen flying over the area and come to rest on trees of the woodlands. Mallards and tufted ducks can be seen swimming on the ponds and some of the largest flocks of water birds in east London have settled in the area.
Herons are natural hunters and dive for frogs and other tasty morsels of food in the lakes and ponds in the area. You might also be lucky enough to catch a glimpse of a beautiful kingfisher at the lakes or along the river. They move very fast, so it could be just a flash of dazzling blue as they whizz past.
Dragonflies & Damselflies
In the UK we have approx 40 species of resident dragonfly and damselfly, so you are likely to see these colourful characters in many of our parks between May and October (especially through July-August), but can you tell the difference?
In general damselflies are slimmer and rest with folded wings, while dragonflies tend to be stockier and keep their wings spread out even when resting.
Dragonflies are fierce hunters of flying insects. The bright blue and green emperor dragonfly is Britain’s largest dragonfly reaching up to 7.8cm long. It is usually found close to water, where females lay eggs in floating pondweed. The larval nymph stage can live for up to two years underwater where it will eat most other water creatures and even small fish before emerging as an adult during the summer months.
Butterflies and wild bees
Our parks have been planted with grasses and flowers so there is lots of nectar and pollen to attract wildlife. Butterflies and other insects abound and the area is home to a variety of wild bumble bees as well as solitary bees that live alone and not in colonies like honeybees.
Pollinators, like bees, butterflies and other insects, are essential for the majority of plants we rely on for food, such as almonds, tomatoes and apples – so they are very useful helpers in our community orchards as well! Bees also pollinate around 80% of European wildflowers, so they help keep our countryside looking beautiful too. Sadly their numbers are declining and we need to do everything we can protect existing habitats and create new spaces where they can thrive.
Black poplars
There are 6 mature female black poplar trees in the Chase Nature Reserve. There are only around 2,000 black poplars in the whole of the country, only 600 of which are female, so it is wonderful that these 6 trees have managed to survive the gravel digging and dumping that previously took place in the area.
The trees are now able to grow safely inside the Chase Nature Reserve and we have recently planted some additional male and female saplings in Black Poplar Wood to increase the total number of trees and boost their chances of reproducing naturally.
Mammals
You are very likely to see squirrels and rabbits in our parks, but we also have a few more secretive mammals that live here. Nocturnal foxes and badgers may be on the move from dusk and through the night, while smaller creatures like mice, voles and weasels are occasionally spotted as they make their way through grasslands trying to avoid predators.
If you are very lucky (and patient) you might even catch a glimpse of the elusive water vole, which is an endangered species in the UK. They live along riverbanks and are under threat from habitat loss and predation by the introduced non-native American mink.