Protecting the environment: The Barton Court Estate river keeper chronicles the highs and lows of maintaining his stretch of the River Kennet

River keeper for the Barton Court Estate Nick Richards is responsible for two and a half miles of river bank.

The river is an important environmental resource and it is Nick's role to maintain the ecological structure of the land around it.

The hard and messy work has begun and I’m loving it.

I choose not to put too much thought into how many posts I have driven into the river’s bed since the end of the trout fishing season, but I love to see the skeleton of what I am hoping to achieve over the winter begin to grow and to take on a physical form.

Throughout the spring and summer these things have been germinating in my mind and the first few dozen posts of the autumn do feel strangely like the first buds to break in the spring.

I can’t pretend to enjoy any day on the ‘man breaker’ or post driver, but it is the most immediate evidence of a summer full of constructive daydreaming beginning to take on a tangible form.

This year will be the first full harvest of the willow that I have been pollarding and propagating for the purpose of re-invigorating the river. I am delighted with the results.

I used to stumble into every month of the year with my eyes open and the vast baggage of aged keepers telling me ‘what has gone before’ influencing my tiny satchel of forward planning.

I hope that I now march forward with more of a sense of ‘what is to come’. The predecessors of the modern river keeper have a great deal to answer for, but had no education and an obligation to please their employers, no matter what the cost to the wellbeing of the river.

We now manage for the river.

I try very hard not to rant or to preach, but given the recent news headlines I think that we all need to be aware of a major issue that is affecting our local streams as well as coastal waters and larger rivers.

Shortages of treatment chemicals and the greed of shareholders have led to the government permitting water companies to discharge raw sewage into our rivers. I haven’t the space or inclination to go deeper into this topic and I have no wish to become a political person, but I urge you all to investigate further and to protest via the many petitions that are being circulated.

Raw sewage is the death knell for many tiny and invisible species. These are the ones that drive the food chain.

On a motionless autumn morning of fog and silence, when even my dog Ella was still, I hadn’t the heart to break the spell by starting the chainsaw. My own personal and noiseless world was damp and chill but too close and intimate to feel entirely real.

The air was animated by life and by movement as if by a fleeting thought. I saw nothing, heard nothing and knew that I was no longer alone – 20 seconds, 20 minutes or half a working day may have passed but I didn’t move.

The autumn sun finally revealed my companion. A Great White Egret hunted in front of me, all unaware, for 10 minutes. I could have poked him with a yard brush.

Lucky me.

Seeing wildlife up close and personal generally takes real skill. Capturing it on film is a whole new world of skills with the added bonus of great toys.

My tips for seeing wildlife are simple. Go to interesting places at quiet times. Hang out in Screwfix car park at first light. Be still and be drab. Don’t buy expensive camouflage, just look at where you need to hide and blend in. Hide your face. The human face and body shape scare wild things.

Still, patient and drab. Everybody who ever sat O Levels is thinking of their English teacher.

Still, patient and cryptic. Every village pond had one and it was conjured up by parents to keep their offspring honest and out of the water.

Eater of ducks, cats, dogs and small children, the pike is possibly the most vilified British animal alive today. Before the return of the otter, she may have been the Kennet’s apex predator. In modern parlance, she was part of a suite of apex predators.

The heron, the cormorant, man and mink all took their toll, but nothing is as rock steady as a mature female pike.

She may be four foot long, carry more than a million eggs and be capable of swallowing a coot. Keepers used to destroy her on sight.

I treasure her and a few lucky rods get to fly fish for her on Barton Court waters. The skills, equipment and flies are outlandish and the fish are more fickle than a teenage daughter. It is a perfect combination for the modern fly fisherman. We almost despise our own successes. If we catch a fish that meets our criteria, we haven’t set the goal posts high enough.

I am finishing off this piece at the end of October. The trees are about to shed, but they are still green. I am still losing pints of blood to midges. There are no acorns this year and the menace squirrels are hoarding conkers. There is precious little fruit for the winter thrushes (fieldfare and redwing) because of our funny, freaky spring.

This isn’t a message of doom. It is as chance to see how nature works.

Go and stand in a hedge, remember my words about stillness and begin to truly see wildlife.