Category Archives: Nature Reserves

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.

Conservation, Nature Reserves

Icy Wind from Europe – time for a good fire

Burning brash

I nearly stayed home today, with the thermometer on -1 Celsius and a chilly wind off a frozen continent for the windchill factor, but I wrapped up warm with 2 fleeces and a bodywarmer under my jacket, and turned up at the hut. No other volunteers arrived, so Netty and I were the team. She said let’s make a fire: she had come equipped with potatoes to roast in case everybody felt like making a celebration out of it. We left them in the hut. I had a biscuit and a cup of tea and we bravely stepped outside.

I cut up a large Christmas tree with loppers: it was clearly an excellent specimen, as it still had all its leaves a month after Christmas, and smelt pleasantly resiny. It caught fire splendidly, and soon we had a fine blaze. It ate up quantities of brambles. The Holm Oaks that I’d cut also burnt well, if anything even better than the conifer; it seems to contain a lot of resin too.

I didn’t think about being cold at all while I worked, so the fire must indeed have been hot. I went home reeking of smoke.