West Oxfordshire Field Club is 60 years old this year. Malcolm Brownsword, who is one of the club’s longest-standing members and a Vice President, has written some personal reminiscences of his time in the club.
Category: Club
Reports of WOFC meetings
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Aston Upthorpe Down
On the warm, balmy afternoon of Sunday 28 May, twenty-two of us wandered down Hill Valley at Aston Upthorpe. While we were being serenaded by blackcaps and whitethroats, we soon identified several butterflies: common blue, brimstone, peacock and small whites. Once we were on a rough chalk and flint hillside, there were the dingy skippers and to our delight what we thought was the rare grizzled skipper.
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Chimney Meadows Wetland Restoration Project
Following Lisa Lane’s excellent talk about the Chimney Meadows Restoration Project in February, on Monday 15 May 2023 thirteen Field Club members met with Lisa once again to see the Project for ourselves. We were lucky in that it was a dry, fairly sunny day, although the wind was chilly.
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Dawn Chorus 2023
A walk to hear the dawn chorus has been a fixed event on the Club’s programme for as long as I can remember and, once a year, it’s certainly worth getting up at 3:30am to hear the birds waking up. It’s also a good opportunity to learn birdsong.
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OTMOOR RSPB RESERVE
It was a bit grey and chilly on the 27th of April when ten of us met with volunteers Sylfest Muldal and his colleague Mike for a three hour, highly enjoyable walk at the RSPB Otmoor reserve.
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Appleton Lower Common
Field Club walks are usually not very challenging, but this one was different: it was variously described as an obstacle course or even an adventure. Despite the challenges, we found what we had gone to look for and people enjoyed the adventure, or at least seemed to.
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Littlestock Brook Natural Flood Management
On Saturday 25 March twelve members met at Grange Farm, Bruern to learn about the Littlestock Brook natural flood management project. Ann Berkeley, who is the project manager of the Evenlode Catchment Partnership,
first explained the origins of the project and then gave us a tour of the key sites. Although it was a sunny morning, albeit with a cold wind, it was very muddy underfoot – as you might expect – as we followed Ann across the fields to look at the leaky dams, swales and bunds used for flood management!
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Oxford University Herbaria
It was noticeably an all-female group of eleven who visited the Oxford University Herbaria on the 17th of February, where we enjoyed a fascinating afternoon led by Professor Stephen Harris from the Department of Plant Sciences.
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Slimbridge WWT
Club visit to Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust, Slimbridge, Sunday 8 January 2023.
As I am writing this the weather is wet and claggy, so we were lucky on Sunday when six of us arrived at Slimbridge for 11am and it was bright and clear. Starting at the Rushy hide we worked our way down to the Holden Tower before lunch.
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Pit 60 in Winter
It was snowing in Witney; the mercury had fallen to minus four the previous evening; there were warnings of freezing fog, and England were out of the World Cup. On top of that there was a report that the lake was almost completely frozen. It didn’t look good for our birding visit to Pit 60.
WEST OXFORDSHIRE FIELD CLUB 