Flyladyphotography By Wendy Cooper

  Over the past couple of months I've been out and about on my local patch and after a few stops and starts from some changeable weather, spring is now charging full steam ahead.  The local patch is a mixture of farmland, a large fallow meadow and three areas of unmanaged woodland, which are a mixture of Beech, Oak, Ash, Hazel and Birch, with Blackthorn and Hawthorn around the margins.   On the penultimate weekend in March, I finally heard the song I had been waiting for, the first of several Chiff Chaffs to return to the area,    This one was in a stand of Salix, across a small brook and was happily calling away, having claimed his patch of trees - over the next few weeks more have appeared, along that stretch and elsewhere around the woodland margins and have been busy calling.  Similar territories seem to be taken up from year to year and during the summer months, I'll be looking for the parents as they go back and forth to nests in the Blackthorn, after foraging for insec

Nice To Be Here...  

  Well recently I decided to forgo a Company trip into town and take the time instead to visit, to me at least, a far more appealing environment;  for some time I've had the Fens in Cambridgeshire on my wishlist of places to explore, so I decided to start with Wood Walton Fen.     Wood Walton Fen is one of a few remaining areas of the ancient fen which covered the area and is a haven for many wildlife species.  Charles Rothschild had already purchased part of Wicken Fen, whch he had gifted to the National Trust and had intended to do the same with Wood Walton.  The National Trust were unable to take the site on so he maintained it as a private reserve for some time before donating it to the Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts.  Today, Wood Walton is maintained by Natural England and is classed as a National Nature Reserve, a RAMSAR site and a Special Area of Conservation.     After an interesting drive (navigation is not one of my strong points, however I did have an unexpecte