I was delighted to have this guest blog accepted by Devon Wildlife Trust about a visit to a new nature reserve that I was lucky to visit in July, https://www.devonwildlifetrust.org/blog/dr-amanda-tuke/finding-time-bird-watch-family-holiday-can-be-challenge
Honoured to have this guest blog accepted by Mark Avery. Guest blog – Why councils should think about weeds in a different way by Amanda Tuke
Returning from a wonderful week of sand dunes and salt marshes, walking in the woods this morning is like putting back on an old pair of slippers. I make for an area near the footbridge which I haven’t visited for a while and find Wood Sage in flower. This plant isn’t really a Sage, the […]
The wood is teeming with people again but the clearing is thankfully tranquil. I touch a Hops (or is it Hop?) leaf within a tangly clump of Brambles and Traveller’s Joy. The leaf is slightly tacky – is that how this plant fights its way through its competitors? A Large Skipper lands on a nearby […]
The Butterfly Bush (Buddleja davidii) is in flower on the side of the rail trackbed. The strong sweet scent and pink lilac mini-trumpet flowers with an orange eye are usually a big attraction for butterflies but not here. I watch for ten minutes or so and there are no visitors. A man walking past with […]
I look up at the sound of a Jay chucketing. In an Ash tree on the edge of a sky pond, a well-grown fledgling is insisting it’s still hungry and its parent delivers. Raindrops hurtle down to me. It’s disorientating but astonishing. We take drops of water falling out of the sky for granted. Knowing […]
And an account of another wonderful visit here
I’m really pleased with the look of my article in Devon Life published today… This was a difficult commission to meet because my plan to visit the reserve was scuppered by lock-down… Luckily I managed to find some incredibly generous local resident experts, Martin Batt, Mary Breeds and Paul Madgett, who know the site very […]
I’ve been incredibly lucky with the weather for my 29 visits so far. So it’s ironic that for today, the 30th one, it’s drizzling. That suits me fine for what I’m hoping to see today at this site which is a combination of chalk grassland and woodland. As I pick my way through the wet […]
At the far end of Hutchinson’s Bank is a triangular chalky woodland. I walk over moss and into a clearing where White Bryony and Wild Strawberry scramble through the Dog’s Mercury across the mossy floor.
The Urban Naturalist 