Nature Blog by Jenny Bourne

Such an abundance of summer and autumn fruit this year – plums, greengages apples, pears, quinces etc. I’m running out of places to store the late season ‘Mutzu’ Golden Delicious variety eaters from my plot, good until early next year, but my neighbours don’t want any Bramleys! It’s been a ‘mast’ year for fruiting trees, a fascinating natural phenomenum,

Strange shapes and forms and ghostly colours are popping up in the leaf litter – it’s fungi time! I was lucky to be walking along by the native deciduous hedge with Susan when she spotted this one; she subsequently identified the large fruit bodies as clitocybe geotropa.

Several reports of kestrel sightings over the past few weeks – could be the juveniles from last year’s successful fledging of four chicks or the parent birds back on site. This one was recently observed foraging, unfortunately on a young blackbird that appeared to have been caught loose netting and couldn’t free itself in time to escape from the predator.

Measuring has been taking place on plots for our annual Autumn Show Tallest Sunflower competition, this year open to all ages.

With over 80% of UK butterfly species in decline, this year’s Big Butterfly Count could be more important than ever. Last summer, following the results from Butterfly Conservation’s Big Butterfly Count ‘the wildlife charity declared a Butterfly Emergency