The Spinney, Carshalton (or Nightingale Road Bird Sanctuary) is a 0.4 hectare local nature reserve in

Carshalton Carshalton () is a town, with a historic village centre, in south London, England, within the London Borough of Sutton. It is situated south-southwest of Charing Cross, in the valley of the River Wandle, one of the sources of which is Carshalton ...

in the

London Borough of Sutton The London Borough of Sutton () is a London borough in south-west London, England and forms part of Outer London. It covers an area of and is the 80th largest local authority in England by population. It borders the London Borough of Croydon to ...

, England. It is owned by Sutton Council and managed by the council and Sutton Nature Conservation Volunteers. It used to be managed by the

London Wildlife Trust London Wildlife Trust (LWT), founded in 1981, is a local nature conservation charity for Greater London. It is one of 46 members of the Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts (known as The Wildlife Trusts), each of which is a local nature conservatio ...

. The L-shaped reserve is a mixture of woodland and scrub, with the main trees being plane and elm. Breeding birds include

dunnock The dunnock (''Prunella modularis'') is a small passerine, or perching bird, found throughout temperate Europe and into Asian Russia. Dunnocks have also been successfully introduced into New Zealand. It is by far the most widespread member of th ...

wrens Wrens are a family of brown passerine birds in the predominantly New World family Troglodytidae. The family includes 88 species divided into 19 genera. Only the Eurasian wren occurs in the Old World, where, in Anglophone regions, it is common ...

and blackbirds. Other animals include wood boring beetles and foxes. An unusual plant is

butcher's broom ''Ruscus aculeatus'', known as butcher's-broom, is a low evergreen dioecious Eurasian shrub, with flat shoots known as cladodes that give the appearance of stiff, spine-tipped leaves. Small greenish flowers appear in spring, and are borne singly ...

. The entrance in Nightingale Road is kept locked and there is no public access.

References

{{coord, 51.3752 , -0.1621, type:landmark_region:GB-BNE, display=title Local nature reserves in Greater London Nature reserves in the London Borough of Sutton Carshalton