Hartslock

Lovely weather today so just walked around the site enjoying it. Lots of Dodder, Clustered Bellflower, Yellow-wort, Knapweed, Field Scabious, Carline Thistle & Centaury in full flower. Buzzards & Kites were overhead the whole morning and the views were magnificent.
Butterflies were very good too, with lots of Chalkhill Blues, Common Blues, Meadow Browns & Small [...]

BBOWT have been working on a large-scale ‘Chiltern Grasslands Project’ for some time and part of that will be to re-fence some of the compartments at Hartslock - mainly slopes 1 and 2. Today we decided to do some work to open up a corridor along the bottom of the site, through the woods, where [...]

We had an absolutely superb day on the reserve today, with glorious weather and a slightly chill wind. A few of the group went to continue cutting the taller scrub at the bottom of slope 3, while the rest of us divided into 2 groups and continued the orchid mapping.
Wildlife was abundant, with Brimstones, Peakcocks, [...]

We had a really lovely Spring day for this workparty - the sun was shining but the wind kept the air a bit keen, so I decided that we’d go to the bottom of slope 3 and finish off some of the scrub management.
The aim of today’s work was to continue the long-term project to [...]

We usually do quite well for weather of workparties but this one was a bit drizzly. It wasn’t too bad though and it was our official BBOWT yearly review where they send along a member of staff from outside our area and he spends the morning with us and finishes by asking whether we need [...]

This was a real novelty because we actually had to cancel one due to heavy snow! I think this has only ever happened once before and then it was just a light dusting. This time my car was stranded in my driveway in Tilehurst and I was told by friends in Goring that the lane [...]

I can’t pretend that it was a glorious sunny day - it drizzled heavily all morning, once we had actually got over to field 5. But we stayed there and it wasn’t heavy enough to be too much of a nuisance and we managed to clear several areas in a large belt of bramble at [...]

We had a really excellent day for the August workparty and so we spent the time just strolling over the site, looking for Dodder and other interesting things. Dodder was very common across compartments 4 & 5 but a little less so than the exceptional year of 2008. Isolated patches also occur across the rest [...]

This month the ground was wet under foot from overnight rain but the showers relented in the main and it was a warm sunny day - ideal for wandering around and just observing things.
For me the best sightings were the Dark-Green Fritillary and the many Prosena siberita (a parasite fly which attacks small chafer/scarab beetles). [...]