Category Archives: Nature Reserves

Love of Nature, Nature Reserves

Charming Wooden Animal Trail at Gunnersbury Triangle

Wooden Animal Trail Camouflaged Smooth Newt

Netty found some dusty but very well-made wooden animals, complete with attachment rings, evidently designed for use on a Nature Trail. She repainted all of them and we hung them around the reserve. The camouflaged animals – the newt and the frog – seemed to ‘work’ the best. We hope the children will have fun going around with their parents to find them. One or two may be quite difficult!

It wasn’t all wooden animals. As it happens, we saw some of the real things, November or not.

Wooden Animal Trail Dragonfly

[Spoiler alert!] We went down to the pond to affix the Dragonfly, and spotted a small limp orange shape floating apparently lifeless at the surface…

Rescuing a drowning newt. We put it in one of the Anthill Meadow refugia (under a carpet mat), it seemed to be fine.

Then we started mowing the Ramp Meadow with its remarkably fine stand of Evening Primroses …

Mowing the Ramp Meadow, Evening Primroses and all

… and found a real frog, escaping the scythes and boots.

Plumply pregnant frog escaping the mowers’ boots and scythes to wriggle under the boundary fence of Ramp Meadow

The Forest School decorated Christmas Candles very gracefully.

Christmas Candles with fresh Holly, Ivy, and Yew
Conservation, Natural History, Nature Reserves

Herald moth brightens a day of clipping path edges

Herald Moth on Netty’s glove, whirring its wings to warm up. Its food plants are Willow and Aspen; we found it under a Grey Poplar so that’s probably what it grew up on. We found another specimen a minute later. They were cold and groggy on this cool, rainy day.
Clipping path edges: the ivy had grown over the edging poles, sometimes by a foot or so.
Love of Nature, Natural History, Nature Reserves

Thursley Common, not just dragonflies

Round-Leaved Sundew Drosera rotundifolia, an insectivorous plant
Red-topped Cladonia floerkana lichens

OK, ok, you wanted some dragonflies. There were masses of Black-Tailed Skimmers chasing about in groups at Pudmore Pond. Black Darters, Common Blue Damselflies, and Small Red Damselflies skittered about the smaller ponds. A large Hawker or two dashed past, unidentifiable, probably Southern Hawker. A Keeled Skimmer perched conveniently nearby, daintier than the Black-Tailed.

Female Black-Tailed Skimmer (doing a Tiffany Lampshade impression)
Keeled Skimmer

Among the birds, some 50 Swallows were roosting on telegraph wires early in the day. Families of young Stonechats gave grating contact calls, unlike the stone-clicking call of the adults. A Redstart flicked its tail in the bushes. Skylarks rose and sang almost too high to see against the clouds over the heathy hills, Shelley described it perfectly in his ‘To a Skylark’: “a flood of rapture so divine”.

Black-Tailed Skimmer
Conservation, Gardening, Nature Reserves

A busy day at the reserve

School visit to GT nature reserve

We set to work clearing the patch of meadow in front of the hut: it usually has a mix of wild flowers to welcome visitors, and that’s what we plan for it this year. We hoed out the weeds, raked out the stones, and sieved the earth to create a smooth seedbed.

Sieving earth for the demonstration wild flower meadow

Being at the front of the reserve, we got to see everyone who came in, and there were plenty of visitors!

Oliver the education officer asks a question. Hands seemed to pop up very quickly.

The reserve has 3 main purposes – to conserve nature, to educate children about nature, and to give the public a place to experience and enjoy nature. It’s a pleasure when all of these can be seen happening at once!

Sawing a board to length for boardwalk
Alexanders, Smyrnium olusatrum, coming speedily into leaf and flower beside the seasonal pond

Spring is rushing along with no time to lose. Areas that were bare a moment ago are covered in fresh green leaves. The water plants seem to be especially quick: the Iris blades are feet high already.

Fresh new Iris shoots in seasonal pond
Conservation, Nature Reserves

Debrambling and Distributor Heads all in a Day’s Work

Volunteers debrambling the Acid Grassland
Four Volunteers
Quite a haul of rubbish by the fence (and yes, that’s a distributor cap)

Distributor bits, wing mirror, electrical leads, yes, there used to be a garage over the fence. What with old rusty pipes, cigarette lighters, glass milk bottles (remember them?)  and remains of workers’ lunches, it was quite a haul. We dug out some champion brambles and quite a few enormous nettles, too.

I also found some bits of Asbestos roofing, but we left them in situ as there was a Smooth Newt sheltering beneath them. All in all, it’s amazing what people will sling over a fence. We were happy to leave the North bank in a better state than it’s been in for many years.

Natural History, Nature Reserves, Wildlife

Nature Red in Tooth and Claw

Pigeon killed and partly eaten by a Sparrowhawk

Many of the photos on this website show nature at its prettiest. Well, not today, but still surely of interest. Nature is in Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s phrase “red in tooth and claw”—or in this case in beak and claw: a Wood Pigeon killed, plucked and partly eaten by a Sparrowhawk. There were many plucked feathers all about, mainly to the right and bottom of the image, an instantly recognisable scene of predation and carnage. The Sparrowhawks nest at the other end of the reserve, and they kill a pigeon somewhere that we notice most weeks. Netty disturbed this one on her walk round this morning, and given the cold damp weather she was surely the first person into the reserve today. The sparrowhawk, definitely not very large and brownish, was either a male or a juvenile.