Page 28 - br-april-2020

April 2020 April 2020

BERE REGIS WILDLIFE AND GARDENING CLUB
ENVIRONMENT GROUP

What a great turnout for our talk on Pests
weeds and climate change . I hope you
With brighter, longer and warmer days the signs of
Spring are now all around us. The bluebells will soon be all enjoyed it.
adorning our local woods, the first swallows will be It seems as though it might stop raining We have dry weather forecast for the
arriving, other birds will be active building their nests. next six days .
You should be able to see many if not all of these
sights along the riverside path, helped by the Looking to the future is not an exact science at the moment. We might all be
conservation work our volunteers have been doing over the past years to create told to stay indoors and go into self quarantine. I know the Flower arranging
a wider range of habitats. meeting for April has already been cancelled. The only silver lining from my point
of view is that we may be able to get out into the garden and do all those jobs
There is a lot of action going on in the village nature reserve at present. Frogs we didn’t do last autumn because of the rain. I might even tidy up and have a
have found the pond on Souls Moor where there is now a seething mass of throw out in the Garden Shed and my flower arranging cupboards. I might plant
tadpoles. This is good because there are many reports of no tadpoles or frogs in more vegetables we might need them.
garden ponds.
At the time of writing our next meeting is still on and we are planning to have a
Beside the streamside walk the talk by Tony Bates on Wildlife conservation Gardens. Tony has been a judge of
bright reddish coloured fungus, the Gardens entered into the Dorset wildlife Trust competition so he will be
Sarc osc ypha c occinea, showing stunning pictures of some of the entries in that competition last year.
commonly known as the
Scarlet Elf Cup, has made its I will be in touch if circumstances change but I think we should keep going as
appearance – see photo. long as we can but we must try and follow best advice at the time. Corona virus
Legend has it that elves use the sounds like a type of flower. Maybe there will be a rose named after it at
little cups for drinking! They Chelsea this year. Who knows by the time you read this item Chelsea will
grow in clusters on dead wood probably be cancelled. All I can say is keep smiling and keep gardening.
particularly hazel and quite
often hidden under leaf litter. Susan Stone
Apparently they make a
‘puffing’ sound when they
explosively release tiny spores.
So if you hear strange noises when walking along the track it will either be that or
the elves partying. Incidentally this fungi are not poisonous.

Conservation Working Parties

At the March wildlife group volunteer work party we tidied up the rest of the
coppiced area along the originally very shaded part of the stream between the
Jubilee and Shitterton bridges. Then we continued clearing an area which was
previously an open area between the pathway and the stream. In keeping the
undergrowth in check along this very wet area we plan to maintain a balance
between creating more open areas for wildflowers to flourish and leaving denser
areas for small mammals and hedgehogs. Where we cleared some now flooded
areas near the pathway there has been a marked improvement in the flowering

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