Insider with Rosie

By the session leader

What a glorious day for traditional autumn hay making – actually meadow raking for us – or maybe we were just extras in “Cider with Rosie”.  It was a goodly 16 of us who set out with rakes, pitch forks, and tarpaulins:

 

It had been dry for several days, so the grass was dry too; the sun shone; and yet it wasn’t too hot.  How lucky is that?  Everyone busy, in twos and threes, chatting away.

Someone nearly tripped on a hole, which had been a wasps’ nest before it was dug and devoured by a badger.  Sorry, no photo of said hole, but can you spot the ducks, snuffling around in the cress?

The tea-crate wallah, told to bring plenty of cake, selected provisions to match the occasion: angel slices because the day was Michaelmas (Feast of St Michael & All Angels); and carrot cake because that’s what the moon had looked like, to an irreverent skywatcher, at 3.15 am the day before during the lunar eclipse.  One volunteer remarked that, “It’s an ancient Green-Gym custom – we always have angel slices at Michaelmas”!

And there were apples too, red skins and red flesh to match our blood red moon, freshly picked from someone’s home just upstream.

The site warden says the wildlife is doing well this year.  There’s evidence of the hedgehogs which they have been encouraging, but happily don’t see much of.  They have spotted their 90th species of bird.  The butterflies are doing well.  And tomorrow our warden does a river fly survey: he lowers a net into the stream, stamps around for a few minutes and then examines the resulting catch in his net.  There’ll be plenty of water shrimps and cadis fly lavae tomorrow.

Here is the local bug hotel – and a bee house, which is fully occupied with eggs for next year, as you can tell because all the holes are plugged:

And finally, it’s the 25th anniversary of the Watercress Beds Nature Reserve, and they are celebrating on Sunday.  We wish them Many Happy Returns!