Ferreting about the Fields
KEYWORTH MEADOW.
A wander along Lings Lane to the meadow that I manage but don’t visit often enough nowadays with the thought that a migrant Wheatear or Ring Ousel might come my way but the nearest I got was Tim the farmer describing a Wheatear he’d seen the previous day. I did get my first Swallow though and there were three Buzzards wheeling around and a Chiffchaff was chiff-chaffing away in the meadow.
COTGRAVE + DCW.
A day around the “healh or valley of Cot(ta)” once again centred around the Willow Tit survey and once again with negative results. We started along the canal and finished with an extensive look at the woodland to the south of the settlement. A few Chiffchaffs and Blackcaps were singing and we found a single plant of Marsh Marigold Caltha palustris (at the second attempt).
At least part of the plantation woodland is known as Cotgrave Gorse and is shown as such on the 1824-1839 Cassini reprint but other bits have developed naturally from abandoned fields into maturing woodland with some botanical interest in the way of Hard-shield and Soft-shield Fern Polystichum aculeatum and Polystichum setiferum, Sanicle Sanicula europaea and a “scold” of Jays. Also, in addition to the extensive patches of Garden Yellow Archangel Lamiastrum galeobdelon ssp. argentatum there was a small patch of what is presumably ssp. montanum, the native variety.
Next to the old Fosse Way, is an area which has been graced with dumped bales of waste plastic bags and somewhat less disgraceful garden plants including Great Forget-me-not Brunnera macrophylla.
To the west of the Owthorpe road is some more recent woodland, one of which has emerged from an abandoned quarry. Here Dave picked out a single Nonesuch Daffodil Narcissus x incomparabilis …
… and a soon to be flowering European Larch Larix decidua.
