I saw you fourteen times, in different outlooks, from spring to winter.
I admired you, your charming heathers.
I was fearful of you, your wicked mire, I stepped in three times.
You are lucky, so many nice people are taking care of you.
I am lucky too, they taught me who you are, and most important of all, how to live with this world.

The heathers finally bloomed extensively. The bright violet colors of bell heathers and ling heathers were so eye-catching.

In the summer, there was not much conservation work. Summer is the season of flowering and thus in summer, the volunteers spent most of their time on recording the types, the numbers and the location of the rare plants for monitoring their growth. The major rare plant they are working to protect is the marsh gentian, a rare plant of wet heathland that has declined markedly this century. Before summer came and from April, they made wire cages to cover the new leaves of the plant for protecting them from treading by the rabbits and other animals.

Early August, the plant finally flowered. Their delicate blue flowers did not come easily.

Then in mid August, their flowering has almost finished and volunteers removed the weeds surrrouding them and hoped their seeds could be dispersed and there would be more flowers next year.

I never like snakes, especially the poisonous ones. However, the volunteers of Buxton Heath are fans of insects and reptiles such as adders (the only poisonous snake native to Britain and are protected animals in Britain, see the left picture below) and slow worms (legless lizards and are protected animals in Britain, see the middle picture below).

April - May is their mating season when they come out from hibernation. The volunteers recorded and monitored the number of adders and slow worms during that period. They also created some basking places for these animals - tin sheets (see the right picture above). Whenever they found them, they were always excited while I usually just glanced at them and walked away.  

Last week, I have done something I could not believe myself - I cut off the gorses along the bank, just for those adders and slow worms! The reason is that they are cold-blooded but we human beings are warm-blooded (full of love). They hibernate from September to March and they need basking (sun bath) for keeping their bodies warm. They are living along the bank in Buxton Heath. If we do not cut off the gorses, they may grow so densely to block the sunshine reaching them. Anyway, I have done something good for them and for their offsprings even though I do not have a heart for them (the left and the middle pictures below show the gorses bushes before and after my cutting respectively).

Buxton Heath is a heatherland - an open habitat of low shrubs dominated by heathers and gorse with scattered trees. In the summer heathlands are a picture of purple, pink and yellow flowers.

Now is early summer. Heathers start to grow and insects start to become active.

The Heathers

Heathers are actually small woody shrubs.  They are the most frequent plants on heaths, covering usually about 30-50cm deep.  Three common heathers can be found in Buxton Heath:

 ling heather (has a flowering spike of pale pink flowers)

 bell heather (flowers are deep purple, bell shaped and hang downwards)

 cross-leaved heather  (leaves are in fours up the stem - if you look down on the stems the leaves look like a cross)

Orchids

   Although orchids are commonly used for decorating the home and offices, various species are easily found in heatherlands. Buxton Heath is no exception. 

Sundew

 Sundew look attractive - bright red, but they eat insects! You cannot blame them - they live in wet bogs which have very little nutrients. Their weapons are their sticky tentacles. When an insect is stuck in their tentacles, they exude digestive enzymes and dissolve the insect.

Ragged Robin

 Ragged robin has five petals deeply divided into four lobes giving the flower an untidy, ragged appearance.

Cottongrass

  The seed heads of cottongrass are covered in a fluffy mass of cotton which are carried on the wind to aid dispersal.

Yellow rattle

 The yellow flowers of yellow rattle occur in spikes. After they die, brown seed pods remain. When these pods are shaken, the ripe seeds inside rattle, hence the common name.

Silver-studded blue butterfly

  Silver-stubbed blue butterfly is so named due to the silvery blue metallic spots on the underside hind wings.

Dameselfly

   Damselflies are resting on the new pond made by us. We have especially added some sticks in the pond to give them more resting place. (Damselflies are similar to dragonflies, but all four wings of damselflies are near enough equal in size and shape whereas the hind wings of draonflies are usually shorter and broader than fore wings. Also, when at rest, most species of damselflies hold their wings along the length of their abdomen whereas dragonflies hold their wings out from the body, often at right angles to it.)

The mission for this visit in Buxton Heath was to dig a pond for the breeding of the dragonflies.

I had never expected that digging a pond was sooooooo difficult! The hardest part was to dig out the surface mud which was so deeply and intricately connected with the roots of the plants down into the surface. The clever way to do this was to use the sharp end of the shovel to cut into the mud and make a square, and then use the shovel to lift up the cubic shape of the mud. Sounds easy? Not at all. First you needed to have enough weight to make the sharp end of the shovel go into the mud. Although it was mud, its hardness was comparable to a rock! So the best way to overcome this was to jump your feet onto the shovel and so using your entire body weight to push the shovel down into the mud. Well, although I knew this was the best way to do it, I did not follow it because… I knew if I did I would slip over the shovel and fall over - the surface area of the shovel was very small and I was quite clumsy at this kind of “stunt”.

If digging the surface mud was so difficult, digging the non-surface mud should be easier, right? Yes, less difficult, but… still difficult for me. The non-surface mud was softer and less intricated than the surface mud, but nevertheless heavy, plus the weight of the shovel, god, I wish I could ask help from Giant Goliath.

If digging mud was difficult, maybe transporting the mud dug-out with a barrow would be easier. That was what I thought at first. So when the volunteer who worked with the barrow took a break, I volunteered to transport the mud with the barrow. My god! It was so heavy that at first I could not turn around the barrow which was pointing at a backward direction and then I could not make it move even for an inch! What made me feel ashamed was that that volunteer was an old man and he had moved the mud with the barrow back and forth for several times. (In fact, one of the volunteers who participated in digging the surface mud was also an old man.)

Due to the hard work of the volunteers (except me), we finished the pond-digging in about an hour. But we did not need to fill up the pond with water. It would fill up itself with water in one day - the water from the neighouring mud would slowly diffuse into the pond. Amazing.

This was my second time to visit Strumpshaw Fen. But unlike the last visit which was purely for a leisure walk, this time was for conservation work - trail maintenance.

The trail we worked on had a small slope at the start. So we spreaded some sand to make that slope more even and less easy for the people to fall over. Some parts of the trail was also spreaded with sand to help water draining otherwise the trail will be too boggy in winter. The amount of the sand used should not be too much, just enough for making a thin layer over the trail, or it will impede the normal grass growth in the trail.

Th sand was dug out in areas adjacent to the trail. The pictures on the left and right below show the look of the trail at the start and at the end of our work respecitively.

The tools we used were shovels and rakes. It was my first time to use a shovel and I found out the shovel was… soooooooooooo… heavy!! Although the shovel I used was already small sized, shovelling the sand was not at all an easy job, so heavy! Fortunately, there were too many volunteers there, so most of the time I had chosen to use a rake to spread the sand even - this was a lot easier. 

Spring has arrived Buxton Heath. There are more green color now. Since all the conservation work for the year has been finished, we simply walked around to see the plants, insects, etc. We also made cages for protecting some delicate young plants of rare species. Unfortunately to me they were just a few green leaves. Therefore ignorant people like me and animals like rabbits may tread on them if they are not protected.

Buxton Heath is now much much less boggy than before, and therefore much much safer to walk on the mire. However I am always the only person among the group who is so scared of stepping into the mire - a mire-phobia symdrome which is incurable for me!! Fortunately I was safe through this time again!! Thank god!

 I dont like reptiles and insects. But the warden is the absolute opposite and most of the people in the group like these creatures as well. When the warden showed me the snowworm, wasp or other insects, he would like to say “it is lovely”, but I usually took a look of the creature and said “oh, ugly!” We have put some tin plates in the area to attract lizards, snakes, etc. Snakes look particularly horrible to me. This time we found some grass snakes but fortunately they were not big so less horrible.       

The Broads is a network of waterways and the Broads in Norfolk is famous in the U.K. for sightseeing.

This time, I went with the UEA conservation society for canoeing in the Norfolk Broads. As I am clumsy at rowing and sports, I of course had joined a team who looked good at rowing - a strong man (although with an excusable big belly) and an engergetic young man (although he looks much better in academics than sports). Actually, I had “forced” them to let me join them because they were very nice people. Maybe they regretted later for their decision because they kept reminding me to paddle harder otherwise the canoe would drift without enough speed.

Unexpectedly, we found some fallen trees in the water blocking our way. So people used whatever way they would think workable to cross over the fallen trees - climbing over the fallen trees, carrying the canoe onshore… Whatever way they had chosen, there must be some people who would be ”sacrificed” if they were very brave - falling into the water! 

The Broads water was quiet. Swans sometimes led your way and sometimes took off or landed the water before you. “Cuckoo”… “cuckoo”… cuckoos could not wait telling us they were there too.

Every time I went to Buxton Heath, there was something new to me. This time, the adders (small poisonous snakes) started to wake up from their winter hibernation. So, besides cutting down the gorses, we looked around to search for the adders. The result was… we found more than 21 adders! When one volunteer told us we should walk in such direction so that our shadow followed us, I had no clue why it had to be so. Later I realized that the snakes were very sensitive and if there suddenly came a shadow, they would run away immediately.

To be honest, I do not like snakes. They look terrible, ugly and dangerous to me. However, our volunteer warden is very fond of snakes! He knew very well where the adders were hiding because he had been visiting the Buxton Heath for many years already. He led us to look for the hiding places of the adders. The adder sometimes was found to be alone, and sometimes to have one or even two other adders nearby.

Tha adders were not big in size and we could only watch them from a distance (because if we went near, they would run away). Therefore, I was not afraid to watch them. On the contrary, I found it very fun to search for them. They were hiding so well that it always took me some time to spot them (even though the people had already pointed to me where they were). (See the picture below. Could you spot the adders?)

The gorses looked so beautiful at this season. With their yellow flowers, they always stood out in the area.

However, for keeping the place a heath, we needed to cut off some of the gorses (my tools in the picture on the right below - a pair of loppers and gloves).

After cutting down the gorses, we needed to carry and pile them at one side. The gorses have thick and sharp thorns. So to hold them by hand, even wearing gloves, sometimes is very difficult. A clever way to do this is to use a pitch fork (see the picture in the middle below). To the gorses which had been cut off, we also painted a red chemical onto the surface of their remaining trunks to kill them permanently.

 Lunch time was always our happy time.

About five months ago, we cut down the willow trees. This time we burnt them. In five months, the environment has changed so much. The left and right pictures below respectively show the same site of the tree cut today and five months ago. What a huge contrast!

To burn the trees, we first needed to start a fire. We were fortunate to have a volunteer who could start a fire in whatever conditions. That day, while we were half way in the work, the rain began to fall, at first drizzle, then pouring. Still and amazingly, the fire kept burning. This volunteer was one of the three cornerstone volunteers for taking care of Buxton Heath. The other two were a young volunteer warden of Buxton Heath and a humorous old volunteer (see the picture at the right most - he was trying to “attack” the photographer (me!), because while everyone was working hard, I was taking pictures.) I respect each of them very much for their perseverance and enthusiasm in the conservation work for the Buxton Heath.

Before we started our work, we needed to put a large tin plate on the ground. Then we started the fire on the plate, and put more and more trees on it.

At the same time, some volunteers cut the already cut-out trees further into shorter sticks, with saws and loppers. This was to make the burning easier.

Here came the fun part - warming the marshmallows and making a toast!

While we were working, we found a lizard in the mire. Everyone (except me) felt very excited and wanted to hold and touch it. I do not mind watching the reptiles, but touch them - no way! However, this lizard was small and to many people very lovely. We did not know why it was in the mire because it would be difficult for it to breath there. It should be hibernating somewhere at that time. So finally we moved him to a safe place.

This time in Buxton Heath, I did not fall into the mire. But I still suffered casualty - when I returned home, I found a number of tiny holes in my jacket - the ashes from the fire!

A nature wonder - in late afternoon in winter, starling flocks will congregate and make a swirling cloud-like formation before settling at their roosting site.

The following video was taken around 6 p.m. on 3 March 2007 at Minsmere nature reserve.

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Starlings are gregarious and often flock. The flock permits more efficient feeding, since each bird can afford to be less vigilant. The greater vigilance of the flock gives each member a greater protection from predators - there is safety in numbers.

During the winter, starlings live in flocks throughout the day, travelling between feeding sites. Starlings feed up to 20 miles from their winter roost, but return each evening. In late afternoon feeding flocks coalesce into progressively larger flocks as they move towards the roost. Large pre-roost assemblages form in places where the birds can get one last meal before nightfall. At dusk birds from these assemblies fly, often in a swirling cloud-like formation, to the roost.

Minsmere is a nature resereve under the managment of the Royal Society for Protection of Birds (RSPB).  It is near Southwold. We went there after finishing the beach clean in Southwold.