There and Back

It never fails to amaze me that so much wildlife live so close to us, and yet it is so easy to miss. However, if you go out with looking for wildlife, or photographing as in our case, then you can often be enchanted or amazed by the variety around you. Today was a walk across a local meadow and by the River Brett, with an aim in mind of seeing anything in the way of dragonfly or such. We were not disappointed. The first thing we spotted by the old Mill, was the Wagtail. This grey wagtail is a member of the wagtail family, Motacillidae, measuring around 18–19 cm overall length. The species looks somewhat similar to the yellow wagtail but has the yellow on its underside restricted to the throat and vent. The top of the bird you will see is more gray. Our Wagtail flew to a perch on a branch and then down onto the Lily pads on the river surface, where he did some hunting for insects. Once in our intended spot by the river, it was fairly easy to get images of t...

We chose to go to Fermyn Woods Country Park as it has a reputation of having a large number and variety of butterflies. We booked into a B&B cottage nearby in the village of Sudborough in what appears to be a converted farm building in the back garden of the owners house. It was perfect, and at a really good price. But first, to the woods to see what was about in the afternoon sun! The whole area around the villages of Sudburough and Lowick, and also Fermyn Woods itself, were once part of the vast Rockingham Forest. It was named after the village of Rockingham, where the castle was a royal retreat. Over the years the forest shrank, and today only a patchwork of the north-eastern forest remains. The area became a royal hunting ground for King William I after the Norman conquest. The term forest represented an area of legal jurisdiction and remained so until the 19th century. The forest boundaries were set in 1299, although the boundaries returned to a smaller area as a resul...