Archaeology Walk this Saturday 25th July

See addition to the post below (with a picture of deer).

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The following day on Sunday 26th July I will be leading  a walk at Cromwell Bottom Local Nature Reserve.

It is our Annual local Big Butterfly Count,
       
                  (but through the day, not for 15 minutes in your garden like David Attenborough's                                Big Butterfly Count, though that is well worth getting involved with too.)

Meet at the car park at 10.30 for 10.45. Bring a packed lunch and spare warm clothing. Insect repellent is strongly advised against the biting flies. The walk will go on till about 3.30pm.

This is a Wildside Walk in conjunction with Calderdale Countryside Department.

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Report on the walks above.


They both went well. There were 7 on the Archaeology one on Midgley Moor. All men!
All the features that Dave Shepherd wanted to show us were found and were quite visible.
The witticism of the day was that if a feature in the landscape had no explanation, it was still "a good example of its kind".

The butterfly walk at Cromwell Bottom was surprisingly sunny and we got quite a few butterflies of 5 species in the morning. Gatekeeper (both sexes) Small Skipper, Ringlet, Meadow Brown and one Peacock. Probably about 35 to 40 individuals seen.

There were 21 of us on that, most having got the details out of the Wildside booklet. Quite a few children were there, bringing their excitement with them, including some with a young Polish family who were very interested. Three came down from the Todmorden (UCWN) group.

It rained as we were finishing the picnic at lunchtime and all wanted to go home, which was fair enough, as the forecast was for it to set in.

The grasses were not so spectacular this year, except the Reed Sweet-grass along the canal side. The flowering rush was not flowering as it has done before at this time.

Again we saw some of the red-listed Luronium natans, the Floating Water-plantain, uprooted by water traffic in the canal.

                                                                             The unique paired standing stones on Midgley Moor

Part of the group setting out to count butterflies at Cromwell Bottom

Female Gatekeeper Butterfly