On Thursday, travellers broke the locks on our gates and set up camp in Simpson’s Field. Wiltshire Council and the police acted swiftly and the group left on Friday night for a more appropriate site. But there are reports of human faeces in the hedges and edges of Simpson’s Field and in the little triangular field at the top of the hill. We will do our best to clean up after our uninvited visitors but if you are walking dogs or children, please take extra care in these areas.
Fencing water vole habitat
Next week, work will begin on fencing part of the tributary stream that runs at the bottom of Village Green.
Continue readingBird flu
Bird flu, like any other flu, comes in different strains, most of which cause few or no symptoms in infected birds. But since October 2021 a very virulent strain of H5N1 has swept around the world causing serious disease and many, many fatalities among both farmed and wild bird populations.
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Disease resistant elms
Progress report
by Ian Bushell
On April 10th we checked the fifteen Dutch Elm Disease Resistant trees, donated by Peter Shallcross and Frank Crosier, that we had planted in April 2021.
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Puddle Corner
by Clive Knight
Phil, Frank, Peter White and I have started to clear the grass that has overgrown the edges of the path that cuts out the flooded bit by Puddle Corner. We were surprised to see how far the grass has encroached onto the path. We estimated that clearing both sides has opened up the path by around 80-90cm. We haven’t reached half way but hope to finish next week.
Continue readingLyrids meteor shower
You should be able to see the Lyrids meteor shower between now and Saturday April 29th. It will reach its peak at the weekend on April 22nd and 23rd, and your chance of seeing shooting stars then will be high if there are no clouds because the new moon falls on April 20th and the sky will be at its darkest.
Take a nighttime walk in the reserve and go hunting shooting stars.
We’re on the BBC!
Mail from Ian Bushell to @bbc.co.uk: April 12 2023
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Send in your snow pictures, please.
© Ian Bushell
Woodland camp
There is always a gang of children, sometimes junior schoolers, sometimes older, playing somewhere in Village Green woods. The personnel changes as one by one gang members lose interest in sitting round a damp campfire, drinking mix-up or smoking what somebody sold them as top quality weed. But new arrivals come to fill the empty places and the gang continues.
What have they been up to?Planning Applications Results
Planning applications 18/10035/OUT for site H2.4, and 20/09659/FUL for site H2.5 have been accepted, while application 20/00379/OUT for site H2.6 has been rejected. The livestream is still available on Wiltshire Council’s website.
This is the letter that the Friends of Southwick Country Park have sent to the Strategic Planning Committee and local councillors, a last plea for sanity before the Committee meets on February 22nd to consider Planning Applications 20/00379/OUT, 20/09659/FUL and 18/10035/OUT.
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Planning applications
On Wednesday, February 22nd, three planning applications for land adjacent to the reserve will be decided by Wiltshire Council’s Strategic Planning Committee. The meeting will be held in the Council Chamber at County Hall, Trowbridge, BA14 8JN and it will begin at 10.30am.
Continue reading “Planning applications”Sheep worrying
Is your dog a sheep worrier?
On several occasions in the past ten days, dogs have escaped the reserve through the hedge at the northern boundary of Village Green and chased sheep in the fields beyond.
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What a difference a day makes!
After sending yesterday’s pictures of the wetland scrapes in Lambrok Meadow, our in-house photographer Simon Knight went back to the reserve to find all its water features, scrapes, ponds, ditches and streams, full to overflowing. Go carefully out there.
Continue readingSCP-LNR
SOUTHWICK COUNTRY PARK LOCAL NATURE RESERVE
PROJECTS PROGRAMME SUMMARY UPDATE – FOR 2022
Background.
The following programme of actions was taken as an outcome of the review of the park on 27th January 2013 by the Wiltshire Countryside Team and Friends of Southwick Country Park (FoSCP). It is intended that this is a living document: a record of previous projects and tasks conducted and an update of works carried out during 2022, a review of the reserve in general, and suggestions for possible future progress.
Floodwater
The Lambrok is full to overflowing – nice to see after all those weeks of drought but go carefully.
All images taken in the reserve 20.12.2022 by Clive Knight
Bag it and bin it
To make it easier for you to access the reserve’s litter bins, we have laid flagstones through the muddy approaches that inevitably grow around the bins once the wet winter weather has set in.
Dog faeces on the reserve’s paths are unpleasant and unsightly; in the fields they are a source of infection for the animals that will eat next summer’s hay; everywhere and anywhere, they are a danger to the health of our visitors, their children and their pets. Bag it and bin it, please.
Thank you
World population
The United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs tells us that some time today the world’s human population will reach 8 billion, double that of 1970.
Continue reading “World population”COP27
The 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference, more commonly referred to as COP27, begins today in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt.
Continue reading “COP27”International cooperation!
by Ian Bushell
At the beginning of October, at the Amateur Entomological Exhibition at Kempton Park, I was introduced to Dr R.L.Brown from New Zealand, who was doing research into potential biological control of wasps.
Continue reading “International cooperation!”Bird Flu
by David Feather
Sadly, here in North Bradley, we had a letter from Defra (Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs) today informing us that Bird Flu was in the area and special precautions were needed. Yesterday, I discovered a dead blackbird in our garden and didn’t think anything of it. Today my view was changed by the letter and I shall be looking out for others.
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NEW SIGNS!
Our Local Nature Reserve status is being celebrated with new signs.
Pictures by Ian Bushell
The results are in
This year’s Big Butterfly Count recorded fewer butterflies than in any previous year.
Continue reading “The results are in”
Backwater
Scrapes 2 and 3 of Wiltshire Wildlife Trust’s ABBA project will be backwaters lying alongside Lambrok Stream. A backwater is essentially a shallow pond connected to a waterway, providing still-water habitat away from the flow and turbulence of the main stream.
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Southwick Country Park Nature Reserve 