Could some-one identify this for us please
Month: June 2018
Birds eggs
The volunteers this morning discovered this bird’s nest and the shells of nine eggs, all hatched safely we hope. The nest was tucked into the new hedge in Pony Wood, you can see the bottom of the wire fence. The eggs are about half the size of a modest hen’s egg.
Can anyone identify?
Ian has a section of egg shell if that will help.
Volunteer session 9th June 2018
Once again I forgot to post this prior to the session but here is the record of what we did.
The warm and sunny weather continued and attracted 14 volunteers to the Saturday volunteering session. Ian continued the collection of signed consent forms under the GDPR, tedious but legal.
- We cleared round the base of new saplings:
- Along the Pads footpath
- In the new Pony Wood hedge
- In the ‘Rotary Club’ extension to Pony Wood.
- Around the meadowsweet in the wild flower margin.
- Further work was done servicing the nosepump and preparing for a better pump system using the existing pipe.
- At Keith’s suggestion we all assisted thinning the fruit trees of multiples.
- A start was made on clearing the vistas in front of the Orchard benches
Roses in Fauna hedge
The roses in the hedge at the Cromwell Road end of the Fauna footpath are looking stunning this year.
Roe Deer
We bumped into Christine Bennet, who does the butterfly monitoring, yesterday on the Fauna path. Fewer butterflies so far this year , probably a slow start give poor weather in April. But she spotted a female roe deer at the border of the Hay Meadow and Upper Sowerholme.
Plantlife around Cromwell’s and Willow Ponds
A patch of white heads have recently appeared on the east side of Cromwell’s Pond (Hay Meadow). Through binoculars, these looked to be cottongrass, identification confirmed by a closer inspection.
There are quite a number of different plants appearing close to the pond. The bulrushes (reedmace) have not been disadvantaged by recent pond clearing work. If anything, they seem to be spreading. There is a also a patch of what is probably great willow herb coming through on the south side of the pond. On the down side, there was also a 6 inch high ragwort which was promptly removed!
Lower Sowerholme is being managed for birds and cattle grazing and – apart from buttercups – relatively few wildflowers have been seen. However, there is an orchid flowering in the rushes around Willow Pond.
