As some of us met in the car park so it started to rain and it turned into quite a heavy shower. But by the time we had finished our usual pre-walk natter it had eased off and soon stopped altogether.
Ten of us this week led by Bruce who was keen to gather some fungi for his talk later that day. But the first thing of note was hearing a Chiffchaff. Was this a ‘late’ migrant taking advantage of the Autumn weather before disappearing south, or an early visitor from the continent? An harmonic analysis of its song might have helped us solve that problem since the accents might well be different, but we hadn’t any equipment.
Up in the woods and despite the shower it was very dry under foot. Bruce described how a number of different varieties of Hazels had been planted when the Garden has first stated but that there had been no real followup. What was striking was the difference between a normal Hazel nut and the Cob varietyas so very clearly shown in the photo below.
Hazel nut photo.
As so often happens, at first sight there weren’t many fungi around, but soon we were almost tripping over them. The problem as always was identifying them which is where John’s photos are so useful.
Back at the stable block we met up with Julian, our bird expert. He had spent the morning up in Waun Las searching for the Hobby, with no luck. However, he had seen the Green Woodpecker near the Great Glasshouse and one of the gardeners had said that this was the first time that he had seen one in the Garden.