Wild Talk

Now is the time of the year when all the small birds come into gardens and gorge themselves on the offerings left out. Our garden is no exception and we have a lovely group of regulars that include: Blue Tits, Great Tits, Coal Tits, Sparrows, and my personal favourite is the Nuthatch. I have had plenty of use out of my camera the last couple of weeks taking photos of them as they feed! This is a Coal Tit ( Periparus ater ), the Coal Tit is slightly less bright in colour compared too other members of the Tit family which you will see below. The Coal Tit is often found in gardens as during the autumn and winter they join large flocks of Tits (such as blue and great) and they then go into woodlands and gardens in search of food. The Coal Tit has a much more slender beak than other Tits and they use this effectively in conifer woodlands, this means they are able to feed with limited competition from other Tits. Coal Tits also stock pile food during the winter, which is why they are di

Finally Autumn is... and so far it has been a hectic one!! I have led three tours in the Cotswolds and two in Cornwall! We have also been looking out plenty of walks and potential tours in places such as Snowdonia and also maybe heading up to the West Highlands of Scotland. I have also now had my graduation ceremony and can now put BSc (Hons) after my name guilt free, it was a good day I got to see all my friends and find out what they are up to as well as wearing a silly hat!!!! I am going off on a tangent though as the reason for this blog was to talk about the wonderful autumnal colour which we are enjoying at the moment, all the woods and paths have a wonderful golden glow! Today we went on a 'photo finding' trip to the New Forest National Park (our closest national park) to try and find some interesting fungi and do some 'leaf peeping'. We did find some wonderful toadstools and fungi but also some rather interesting history! The Rufus Stone to commemorate the

Yesterday I visited the Cotswolds with my father and my sister Rebecca to go and look out a walk that I am going to be leading in September. The walk in question was from Broadway to Chipping Campden which is a lovely walk alongs the Oolitic Limestone escarpment running from Fish Hill which Broadway Tower sits atop of and Dovers Hill above Chipping Campden. Oolitic Limestone is the main stone in the Cotswolds and is the famous Cotswold Stone which lends it colour to towns such as Boradway, Chipping Campden and the world heritage city of Bath, Oolitic is derived from Greek and means 'egg stone' which can be clearly seen under a microscope lense where it looks like compacted fish eggs.  Broadway which is where the walk starts (although we walked from Chopping Campden and then back) is often called 'the jewel of the Cotswolds' and the 'Northern Gateway to the Cotswolds'. Henry James once said this of the town: "Broadway and much of the land about it are i

The job hunt it still ongoing, I am not as bothered as I could be as it is giving me the opportunity to have more of a role in the family walking holiday business. Yes it means plenty of office work but the field trips make it all worth it! Some of these include looking out walks along the Kennet and Avon Canal, the Cotswolds, and soon I will be heading further afield to Snowdonia and the Highlands of Scotland! The Kennet and Avon walk that we looked out was a walk across to the lovely village of Hampstead Marshall where there is a beautifully preserved and maintained Saxon church, which really makes a fantastic final mile stone before reaching the pub! The estate at Hampstead Marshall is surrounded by lovely wild flower meadows and fantastic trees and avenues as well as some rather large, albeit slightly out of place, architecture in the form of ornamental pillars. These pillars come out in rows from the front of the house like the spokes of a wheel; this was where there were onc

I have finally finished my university course and so now the job search has begun! Hopefully being out of university will give me the opportunity to work more on my photography skills and enjoy myself more in the countryside! Growing up in the Downs has meant that I have always been surrounded by wild flowers and especially Orchids, this year though has brought with it a particularly spectacular haul of flowers including Orchids. This year on the meadow next to the house the Orchids found have included: Butterfly Orchids, Tweyblades, Pyramidal Orchids, Bee Orchids, Common Spotted, Early Purples and Fragrant Orchids. This of course has given plenty of opportunities for photography as can be seen below. This is a Bee Orchid, a Bee Orchid is designed to too look like a female Bee so that a male Bee will come and try and breed with the Bee and will in the process get pollen on it. Sadly though the Bee the Orchid is designed to attract does not occur in this country and so all Be

I had the pleasure of visiting the Painswick Rococo Gardens this week to look at the stunning annual display of Snowdrops which has been open to the public in several different forms for over a century, at first this was one afternoon every spring when it was opened to the local people of Painswick but has now become a spectacle which opens throughout the growing season and attracts people from far and wide. Painswick itself is a quintessential Cotswolds town with its beautiful honey buildings and the church is stunning with many Yew Trees growing within the church yard; the legend suggests that there are just 99 Yew Trees and states that if the 100th tree was ever to be planted then the devil would destroy it! Although this was then proven wrong when in a process to mark the millennium every church in Gloucestershire was given a Yew Tree to plant, that hundredth tree is still going strong (this though is slightly exaggerated as in actual fact there were already over one hundred Yew Tr

February has been a very interesting month this year, in aid of my own study procrastination I have walked through snow drifts in the Shropshire Hills AONB, ridden on the steepest inland funicular railway in the country, travelled to London twice, and visited Bath. Although not strictly true as much of this was done in aid of my university research into Bracken management and also the start of the dreaded post-university decision... post-grad or job?  I visited the Shropshire Hills AONB, incidentally only 30 minutes from my shared university house, to escape from a rabble of river ninjas in camouflage and face paint who through my house mates project were at the time sprinting around my house stopping spillages and general pollution all in aid of a video for the Wildlife Trusts. So while they poured cooking oil over compact cameras I took my own and looked out a walk for my family's walking holiday business. It was a stunning day with the bright sunshine only being blocked