During a routine collection of very small animals living on the farm, Forest Row Natural History Group has found a springtail which has not been formally described by science. Living among the moss Cryphaea heteromalla on a willow by the river, the identity of this 0.8mm-long creature was confirmed by Peter Shaw of the University […]
Every year we manage to make at least one visit to Pixton Meadow in the village, not least because it is such a delightful and popular spot. As we have noted before, meadows have seriously declined over the last 70 years so it is great to see even this example of what in the past […]
A couple of weeks ago two of us visited Minepits wood at Tablehurst for a natural history group meeting devoted to the animals of leaf litter and the soil. Though we’ve been recording species at the farm for the past couple of years, almost all of the creatures that have been observed have been above […]
This New Year was the sixth time the Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland organised a plant hunt. Its objective is to record any (non-planted) species in flower around and just after 1 January. This has proved to be considerably interesting since it has provided a stark indication that many more plants are flowering in […]
After our last rockpooling adventure, there was definitely some keenness to do it again. However, the main challenge at this time of year is finding a date; you need a good low tide (ie a spring, rather than a neap, tide) which falls within daylight hours, ideally not at dawn, and preferably at the weekend. […]
Last year we visited Kidbrooke Park in Forest Row with the Sussex Fungus Group. It rained but that didn’t stop us finding an interesting array of species. So this year we had another visit (on 6 November); this time it didn’t rain, and a different group of fungi turned up. Our leader was Nick Aplin, […]
Of course you can’t go rockpooling in Forest Row, so we had to head to the coast to see some groups of organisms that don’t occur in the Weald. Most importantly, there was a supremely low tide a week ago, so there was the opportunity to see things that rarely get uncovered by the sea. […]
Today was a gorgeously sunny moment to have a short walk on Ashdown Forest. Our local heath hosts a nice range of habitats, in which some rare and beautiful species can be found, and they were the focus of our walk. The primary purpose of the walk was to see one of the Forest’s iconic […]
This article appeared in the Summer 2016 issue of the Tablehurst and Plawhatch Newsletter. Over the last seventy years the diversity of living things on farmland has declined astonishingly. Where there used to be abundant birds, butterflies, moths and plants, most typical farmland nowadays has a much reduced range of species. This can be problematic […]
Twelve of us met at the sports ground to have our ears opened to the variety of birdsong by Tom. As ever, it wasn’t really at dawn, since the birds had been up for more than an hour, but at least the cacophony of birdsong had by now quietened down making it a bit easier […]
Nature's book 