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Reserve of the Month - Martin Down

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I thought I’d start a regular thing of highlighting some of my favourite nature reserves up and down the country, and what better way to start than with Martin Down, one of the largest uninterrupted chalk downlands in the country?  I feel bad writing about this place because when I was a child this was where we went for quiet family walks, mostly to see the wildflowers and butterflies that are abundant there, but also for the lovely views across the gentle Hampshire/Wiltshire/Dorset borderlands where I grew up. These days the reserve has been thoroughly “Discovered” but it still retains a sense of remote beauty and it teems with biodiversity. Martin Down Martin Down lies at the point where three counties meet (The actual point is in a corner of Vernditch Chase north of the A354) and is a National Nature Reserve, mostly for its assemblages of rare flowers and butterflies. It hosts species that make botanists, ornithologists and entomologists drool, from burnt orchids, to marsh fritill
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The Joy of Looking for Orchids

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This week has marked the start of what I like to think of as orchid season. I don’t know what it is about orchids that I love so much – there’s something infinitely exotic and beautiful about this diverse group of flowering plants. They’re ephemeral and can be hard to find, and yet once you know “Your patch” then you’ll be rewarded year after year by the reappearance of these wonderful flowers. Some of them are among the UK’s rarest flowering plants, and there are some species that grow in just one small space in this country. Orchids have always held a special fascination for me – when I was growing up in the Avon Valley a favourite walking spot was Martin Down, an almost fabled nature reserve on the borders of Hampshire and Wiltshire. There are numerous species that grow here, including rare Burnt Orchids (Or Burnt-Tip when I was a child), Greater Butterfly Orchid, Bee Orchid and lots more besides. The names are part of the joy of finding them – the Bee Orchid really does resemble
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Nature and Mental Wellbeing

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Hopefully you’re aware that this week is Mental Health Awareness Week. Mental well-being is something that nobody would have been able to ignore over the past year, with the pandemic and the lockdowns implemented to deal with it causing immeasurable damage to people’s mental health. Throughout the past year the stream of bad news stories has been horrendous, with the endless speculation about where it might all end and how best to deal with it. Your previously fairly sane-seeming friends may have metamorphosed into froth-mouthed conspiracy theory-spouting maniacs or started to refuse to go outside in anything other than a Hazmat suit. And that’s before you get on to the unimaginable horror and tragedy of the actual pandemic itself. To put it mildly, it’s all been a bit too much. There has been a fair bit of optimism from time-to-time – as I type this my immune system is busily producing the antibodies and t-cells for fighting Covid-19, after receiving my first vaccination against it.
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Woods and Wetlands of East Kent

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Sometimes it works out that you go off in search of one thing, fail to find it and in the process discover something unexpectedly wonderful. One of the hardest lessons to learn in exploring the natural world is to open yourself up to make the most of whatever comes your way, whether it’s finding the beauty in something as familiar as a robin or a daisy or seeing something amazing through pure chance. Our last nature excursion beyond the M25 took us out in to the wilds of east Kent. Kent is blessed with quite a lot of really extraordinary wildlife, from the apocalyptic scenery of Dungeness to the steep scarp slopes of the North Downs, it should probably re-brand itself as “The Wildlife Garden of England.” (The Kent Tourist Board is welcome to use that – the first one’s free) Among all its varied landscapes and wildlife though, for me Kent is synonymous with rare orchids, and this is what we'd gone out to look for. We had driven down to Denge Wood just outside Canterbury to meet
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Seaford Head

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I think one of the things that I’ve missed throughout the various lockdowns (aside from my family and friends of course) has been the sea. If I had to choose a natural habitat, I’d definitely go for the littoral zone, and I don’t know what this says about me. I just like a good transitory environment, the ever-changing space between the land and the wide-blue sea. Unfortunately being in London means that the coast is always a bit of a schlep, and because of London’s frustrating transport geography even the bits that are physically nearby out in the estuary are an absolute nightmare to get to from this side of town. Generally if I’m heading for the coast, it’ll be somewhere in Sussex – back in the day we’d get the train down there, with plenty of stations to choose from all along from Chichester to Rye, but these days it’s a 90 minute trundle in the car. Our target was Seaford which is, to my mind, one of the strangest coastal towns in Britain. Being by the sea
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Signs of Spring!

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 The seasons have come around fast, probably because I’ve spent the vast majority of the last year inside a flat. Somehow, in spite of the pandemic, the world is still turning and once again spring is starting to, well, spring up everywhere. The park is extremely muddy at the moment from a winter of trampling while going for a walk in the park has become the highlight of most people’s weeks. Getting off the main paths is a pretty mucky thing to do right now, so most of our sojourns into the park have stuck to the hard surfaces. Red deer ignoring the early joggers Spring seems to get earlier every year with late February now being the time when we get our first reliably warm days. This is another reminder of how much our climate is changing, and all over the place people are spotting things that would usually not appear until March or even April. The Woodland Gardens are full of daffodils at the moment with some wonderful glades smothered in them. The woodpeckers are also busily definin
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Big Garden Birdwatch Day!

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After three months of settling in, we now feel like our new flat is our home-from-home. Apart from the benefit of a second bedroom, and being a two minute walk from Bushy Park (As opposed to the five minute trek we used to make), the new place also benefits from having a slightly more secluded front garden area. One of the first things Rachel did when we moved in was to start hanging bird feeders in a holly bush outside - nothing special, just a couple of seed feeders, some fatballs, a coconut husk fatball, and two bird tables... Actually, for quite a small space, that's a lot of bird food but that's not to worry because we have plenty of takers. A pair of house sparrows On a normal day we'll see several species on the feeders. The predominant birds are very definitely the house sparrows who seem to mostly live in the hedge and come chattering from all over to feast on the seed. There seem to be quite a large group and their noisy presence is always a delight. Like many sub
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