Category: Club

Visit to Parsonage Moor Sunday 25th August 2024

Julia Reid writes:

We were so lucky to have chosen Sunday for this visit. Saturday had been a day of relentless heavy rain and would have been miserable. Instead, we were treated to a day of cloud but no rain and although paths were damp, with puddles in places, they were perfectly navigable. So twelve of us set off, led by expert naturalist and photographer Peter Creed for what turned out to be a fascinating and really enjoyable morning. Grass of Parnassus was what we were hoping to see, but there was a lot more, and some suprises too.

Whitecross Green Wood 8 August 2024

This ancient woodland once formed the Royal Forest of Bernwood. BBOWT have been felling the Scots Pines planted there in the 1960s and are replacing them with broad-leaved species. The mainly-straight rides are particularly wide, thus letting in plenty of sunlight to encourage growth of plants to encourage butterflies, moths and other insects. For the day of our visit, the forecast was for drizzle, and unfortunately this proved to be correct. Consequently the twelve members who attended got rather wet!

Seven members of the Field Club plus one, very welcome, visitor met in Swinbrook churchyard for an evening walk before looking for glow-worms.  We had a fine evening and heard or saw several birds, including Stock Dove, Tawny Owl and Barn Owl.  We stopped to peer at the River  Windrush just past the Church at Widford before heading up the hill track that took us past Manor Farm and the site of the medieval village.  The fields looked magnificent as they were planted with Phacelia tanacetifolia (sometimes called fiddle neck).