Tuesday, September 04, 2007

4 September: Hamsterley Forest

We took our cameras for a walk in Hamsterley Forest. We saw lots of wood ant nests, and a spider's funnel web, as well as deer footprints (that probably isn't the correct technical term) in the mud. There was a bit of this deciduous woodland -


And some of this conifer plantation -

And lots of bilberries and bracken along paths like this -

And even one of these -

But there were lots and lots of flowers, and most of them were in pink-to-purple shades. There were heather, knapweed, rosebay willowherb, burdock, thistles, and foxgloves. We also saw a few ox eye daisies, buttercups, ragwort, some harebells and silverweed, a patch of eyebright, and a single viper's bugloss (isn't that such a wonderful name!).

There was also a small area of these orchids - probably common spotted -

And as the camera was focussed on this scabious, a bee arrived -


Some red clover had large flowers -

And there were some umbellifers with intact seedheads -

We had a lovely walk, and were home in time for tea.

6 comments:

Rog said...

Looks very nice Stitch!

(Oz used to walk the Hamsterley Way, but then his legs grew a bit longer.)

stitchwort said...

Never seen a hamster there, but there were horses, lots of downhill mountain bikers (getting taken back to the top in a minibus - very green, and very athletic!), and some people who were barbecuing in the car park when we arrived, and were still barbecuing in the car park when we left.

Granny J said...

Lovely woods. Wouldn't it be nice if we could just trade woods for a day?

stitchwort said...

granny j - that would be really interesting.
We don't get lace leaves from leaf-miners, but the maple leaves get black spots this time of year.
There are some big wood sculptures in Hamsterley Forest (not sure if they are chainsaw ones), but they are near the children's play area, which we normally avoid!

Z said...

Murph made me laugh!

Gorgeous photos, just the thing to send me to bed feeling cheerful. Thanks for sharing your walk

I, Like The View said...

maybe I could put one of your lovely photos on dave's birthday blog. . .

if that's not asking tooooooooo much?!?!?