My first independent trip. 28/11/21



I struggled to organise a field trip that I could do on my own as I keep thinking I'll miss something if I just walked out surveyed on my own. But managing something was harder to do.

Today, my mother and I went with the dogs to Hothfields Heathlands near Ashford, which is a popular place for dog walkers. The air was very cold, 1-degree Celsius to be precise. Last night temperatures dropped below freezing point so there was evidence of frost around sheltered places out of the sun's reach.

The car park was surrounded by Stinging nettles, Ivy and Brambles, lots of Brambles.



By my feet in the open area was a number of worm casts, which are small heaps of soil ejected by worms after ingestion and digestion.

After crossing the road I noticed that there are sweet chestnut trees by the nut casings left on the floor. Not long afterwards I noticed some disc-shaped fungi hiding in a bush. A few minutes and a gate, into our walk I saw Heather plants, a plant I've learned that likes acidic soils and can be quite variable in the way its flower develop and open.

Around the area were molehills and rabbit droppings, but these animals would no doubt want to stay underground and not get the attention of the dogs. During which I saw two plants with yellow flowers, one on the ground called Ragwort, the other was Gorse bush. I didn't expect yellow flowers to grow at this time of the Winter season as I associate yellow with spring and summer.




We then traversed over the wetlands and there was a wooden walkway that felt more like a bridge, which had unusual plants growing next to it, that I wasn't familiar with it. There was no shortage of soggy mud to skirt over. I saw a magpie fly around.

We noticed different types of moss around here and Mum wanted to know if these diverse mosses were indications of pollution being emitted around the area.


I spotted two small birds in trees, which Mum identified as a blue tit and a great tit respectively, indigenous birds. Being the winter season, some birds must be still getting ready to shelter for the cold temperatures.

I saw logs placed as piles and others into makeshift teepees. Mum told me that the logs would be useful for beetles for their habitation. I wonder if beetles use trunks to reside inside them. 

To finish off the trip, we noticed a large and deformed oak tree, next to it was a trunk that was covered in Fungi and a hollowed-out tree that contained really tiny fungi.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Walk in the Ashford's Woodland

Image
Yesterday Mum and I went with the dogs to the woodlands where my fitness group and I would exercise on a routine and regular basis. Exercises involved include lots of running, pushups, situps, burpees etc. But I digress. The park is filled with Oak trees and there were plenty of stinging nettles and bluebells around the woodlands, which covered a lot of ground. As we moved into the first part where the exercises begin, namely where other visitors would practice using bicycles, we spotted a Robin, but I wasn't successful in getting a good picture.  Afterwards, we saw a dead tree that must've been struck by lightning as it was burned inside like really burned. Inside was a massive colony of ants and I only took a picture so it may be a little hard to see them. But they were really active inside the tree. Of all the things I didn't expect to see was two ladybirds mating on a leaf as we moved up the hill. Mum told me that ladybirds are very important to an ecosystem as their la...
Read more

Lake District Field trip- Pursuit for energy sources and decarbonisation.

 I arrived at the Lake District, and so far, it's been an interesting experience. Sarah has asked me to cover two subjects, and the first I want to talk about is the Net Zero Carbon achievement that the Lake District has placed by 2030. Time's not really on its side, but we have to try nonetheless. To that end, I propose some methods to help reduce the Carbon footprint. The first thing we need to address is transportation. A lot of places require vehicles to move from A to B. To reduce the CO2 footprint, we should establish a railway station for long-distance travel to bring people in and out of the Lake District, the railway accounts for less then 2% of the annual emissions in the UK as well as Globally (Ritchie, 2020), plus there's still potential to reduce their emissions further. The question is, where to place it? Will we be able to convince enough people to use it, and will it become economical? I recently learned that Sweden has developed Mills that can generate Iron...
Read more

Return to Alderbed Meadow

Image
Today I walked with my dad to Alderbed Meadow. On the 14th of December, I originally went there when it was recently reopened after suffering ash dieback and was closed to the public for some time.  On the "lucky" day of Friday, the 13th of May, I decided to return to check how its developed since then. So the first thing to notice was that the reserve was completely covered in Wild Garlic. It's not as strong as your store-bought garlic but you could still smell it if you're unfamiliar with it. After turning right my dad pointed to a makeshift Beatle hotel for insects to live in. We couldn't get close to it due to the garlic all over it. We then walked up the pathway to a bridge that had a stream flowing along with it. It's not deep and the flow is slow, and it's been like that for a long time. The Water Table must be exhausted. On the left was a large naked tree, and by naked I mean that the tree had no branches or leaves, nothing. Just a birdhouse that m...
Read more