Brush Hill nature reserve

It was a lovely sunny morning, so I took Bug Mad Girl up to Brush Hill nature reserve. It's one of our favourite sites for fungi at this time of the year, but we didn't see any at all. It was very dry though, so I expect we need a couple of days of rain for them all to appear.

The view was lovely when you got out of the woods, onto the top of the hill.

Bug Mad Girl climbed her favourite tree. It's covered in lovely lichen and moss.

Lovely lichen

We went for a walk through the woods and saw lots of squirrels and a few pheasants. We also saw 2 Jays (unfortunately no time for a picture), but as they flew away from us we could clearly see the electric blue fan of their wing feathers. Bug Mad Girl has always loved Jays, ever since she found a bright blue feather at Brush Hill when she was about 4.

There seemed to be lots of old badger setts around, but I don't think they were being used as there was no fresh soil or chalk scraped out of the hole. This one did have a big poo outside the hole, that was full of red berries.

This enormous bird house had been put up - not sure what sort of bird it was for, but something big, maybe an owl (?)


 

This old bird house was hanging off a tree. I just like all the ivy and branches, with the green leaves behind it.



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Bug Mad Girl found a millipede on a tree

She also spotted where something had eaten pigeon for tea

And she found some woodlice in an old rotten tree trunk

We saw a few butterflies around (a comma, speckled wood and a small tortoiseshell), then we spotted this Robin sitting on a log. It was very tame and didn't seem to mind us getting very close to it. I think it may be a young one that's still getting it's adult plumage.

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