22 March 2025. Just after seven. I’d still be at home – coffee, toast, the neighbour’s cat on the balcony – if the washing machine upstairs hadn’t gone into its “about to take off” cycle. Boots on, notebook in pocket. The cycle path by Puente de Segovia isn’t much of a path today. More like the shallow end of a swimming pool.
Luis is here, of course. Been here longer than most of the benches. “Before they stopped mowing the banks like a bowling green,” he says. He’s got a rake, dragging out a mess of branches. Ducks on the bench. Same bench, apparently. One of them bit him last week. I tell him the sandwich story from 2019 – he says it might’ve been the same duck. Wouldn’t surprise him.
Back in May 2016, the city opened the weirs along a 7.5 km section – finally let the water be a river instead of a concrete canal. “Ecological restoration” in the press release. In reality? Flow rates changed. Sediment settled differently. The banks loosened up, started collecting plants again. That’s the beginning of a corridor, if you let it keep going. Luis puts it simpler: “We stopped fighting the river, and it stopped sulking.”
SEO/BirdLife monitoring lists 100-plus bird species here now. 134 in the best season. This morning: mallard, moorhen, grey heron, two white wagtails flicking midges off the mud, a kingfisher (Alcedo atthis) under the same overhang I saw last winter.
It’s never random, these returns. Willows (Salix alba) and reeds (Phragmites australis) move in first. Trap the silt. Give the banks something to grip. That’s where your invertebrates start stacking up. Which means more swallows. More warblers. Bats at dusk. And, yes, rats. Always rats. “Old residents,” says Luis. I mention the ants behind my fridge. He laughs, says it’s the same story in his shed.
The council wanted to add more lighting last year. I’ve seen this play out elsewhere – Nycticorax nycticorax (night heron) just disappears from lit banks. Here? Same. Herons in the dark. Pigeons in the light.
The March floods? Left puddles big enough to swallow a boot whole. But what sticks out are the new shortcuts. Thin scars across the banks where people cut corners. Twenty seconds saved for them. Nesting habitat lost for moorhens. It’s like trying to grow tomatoes on a balcony in August – timing and shelter are everything, and you lose either, you lose the lot.
The Getafe Rio project aims to renaturalise 2.5 km of riverbank by 2029, backed by the Ministry of Ecological Transition. Could work. Could flop. Depends on whether the planners keep their nerve when the public asks for more paving. Ducks will adapt either way – they always do.
The Manzanares is a thread through the city now. Fish use it to reach upstream spawning grounds. Amphibians spread along its edges. Migratory birds follow it like a service road. It’s the same principle as the vulture flyways I’ve written about before. Keep the links intact, or the whole thing frays.
Luis watches a jogger splash through a shin-deep puddle without breaking stride. “After the floods,” he says, “the ducks don’t care where the river ends. People either.” He’s back to raking before I can think of a reply. My hallway doormat is going to be a write-off.
Field Notes – 22 March 2025
- Surface water temp: maybe 10–11°C – no thermometer.
- First chiffchaff song this year, near the old rowing club.
- Reed shoots up in two sections; one already grazed (rabbits, I think).
- Luis insists the “biting duck” is the same one from December.
- Silt load heavy in back-eddies; water clarity low.
- Two kids feeding pigeons bread; a heron watched, didn’t move.
- Boots soaked; doormat now beyond hope.