Category Insects
Return to Pixton
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 […]
Creatures of the soil
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 […]
Wildlife at Tablehurst
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 […]
Springtime surprises at Tablehurst
There are often surprises when you go out for a walk, even if it is somewhere that you know really well. You may wander off your usual route and find a corner of the countryside that you didn’t know existed before, or you may notice a plant, an insect, or a bird that you don’t […]
Pixton Meadow
The main focus of today’s walk was the lovely meadow at Pixton, just north of Emerson college. It is looking great at the moment, so it was an ideal opportunity to focus on a particular habitat that is only 30 minutes’ walk from the centre of the village. Though there were plenty of other things […]
National Garden BioBlitz 2015
The weather on Sunday 31 May wasn’t that great when we headed to Alastair’s garden in Colemans Hatch, though considering that the forecast had been truly awful it turned out better than expected. The garden itself is within Ashdown Forest, has a pond and a (largely covered) stream through the middle of it, so has […]
Spring at Tablehurst
The weather forecast really wasn’t very good, and I had expectations of no-one else turning up, but happily there was no rain, even if it was a bit overcast and chilly. So, five of us managed to have a very short walk through the farm looking out for birds, spring plants and some invertebrates. Heading […]
Wildlife at Tablehurst and Emerson: Winter and Early Spring
Since the beginning of the year we’ve been recording any wildlife we see in the kilometre square TQ4335, which is the one that includes the core bit of Tablehurst, plus Emerson as well as a part of the Forest Way and the Medway. It is an interesting way to get more familiar with all the […]
Bees, common and rare
About twenty people turned up in the glorious sunshine today to attend a fantastic talk at Tablehurst Farm by Nikki Gammans on bumblebees. Nikki is a biologist who is the project leader of the short-haired bumblebee reintroduction project, and is passionate and eloquent about her specialism. There are about 250 species of bees in Britain, […]
Nature's book 