Nature Counts

Todays walk was near Ashton, starting at Park Bridge heritage centre.

We found lots of interesting flowers and bugs!

First we looked at the daisy flower under a hand lens and learned that it is a composite flower made up of many tiny flowers - you can just see some of the yellow ones are opened while others aren't

You can't see the sculpture of a kestrel very well on this photo, but what was interesting was the noise coming from a hole near the top of this tree stump. A little patience revealed a greater spotted woodpecker visiting to feed its youngster in the hole. No reprieve from the noise though - this was one hungry baby!

Flowers spotted - who likes butter! Meadow buttercups are tall and have deeply lobed leaves wheras the creeping buttercup is much lower growing and has 3 segments to the leaf.

Can't remember what this one was called!

 Jack by the hedge

Red Campion - 5 lobed petals, leaves in pairs on the stem

Bistort

On the Bistort we found these very bright froghoppers

Other bugs found

 May fly - had 2 incredibly long tails!

Unidentified fly

Luke found a great dandelion trumpet and the boys learned to play the grass pipes!