Wood spurge (Euphorbia amygdaloides) photographed in the park by Clive Knight.
Header picture (CC0) pixabay.com
Wood spurge
Lyrids meteor shower
The Lyrids Meteor Shower will peak tonight between midnight and dawn.
Continue readingInvasion of the Spanish squill
Our native species of bluebell (Hyacinthoides non-scripta) is threatened by the spread of Spanish squill (Hyacinthoides hispanica), a similar species imported into our gardens from southern Europe during the 17th and 18th centuries.
Wild garlic
The wild garlic is just coming into flower.
Recording butterflies
iRecord Butterflies is a free app for your smartphone that will help you identify and record any butterfly that you see in your garden while you are in lockdown. Your sighting will be logged by Butterfly Conservation and added to their records.
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Field maple flowers
Field or hedge maple (Acer campestre) photographed yesterday at the top of Simpson’s Field.
Looking on the bright side
1Air pollution levels are falling all over the world. In some UK cities, air pollution has fallen by almost 70 per cent. Daily carbon dioxide emissions have fallen by almost 60 per cent across the EU since the coronavirus pandemic began. Is here going to be an upside to this lockdown, after all?
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Continue reading “Looking on the bright side”Badger
There is a badger sett in the park, hidden away in the boundary hedges.
Continue reading “Badger”Wild arum
This is wild arum (Arum maculatum) growing in the copse at the top of Brunt’s Field.
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Peacock (Aglais io).
This spell of warm weather will have brought all the peacock butterflies out of hibernation.
The Parkโs Veteran Oaks
By Ian Bushell
Southwick Country Park has a number of veteran oaks and ten ancient oaks. There are no hard and fast rules about when and why an oak tree becomes classified as veteran or ancient; in different environments and soils oaks grow at different rates and girth is only an indicator. Here the underlying Oxford clay provides an excellent medium and the trees are large and shapely.
Continue reading “The Parkโs Veteran Oaks”Broken bridge
One of the Decorative Bridge’s panels has fallen out.
Continue reading “Broken bridge”
Please don’t park across the entrance road.
The car park is closed but the emergency services and the people who feed the animals at Hope Nature Centre will still need access.
The extraordinary flowers of white dead nettles.
Lockdown
Behind the public face of our website, are pages of data and analysis that include information about how many people access the site, where they access it from, and what they look at.
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Walking the dog
by Suzanne Humphries
Under the present lockdown rules, walking the dog is a permitted activity so Dog and I, armed with a camera, set off to check on the park.
Continue reading “Walking the dog”Birdsong
Trowbridge and Southwick, all locked down and emptied of traffic, are full of birdsong. Here are some interesting facts about birdsong.
Continue reading “Birdsong”Burrowers: water voles
The third, and last, of the short videos about the mammals that live underneath the park’s green fields:
Mail and dramatic photographs from Chris Seymour, another park user lucky enough to live within walking distance of the park.
Continue readingGoldcrest
Last week there was a report of a pair of goldcrests in the conifers by the path at the top of Simpson’s Field. Goldcrests are Britain’s smallest bird; a tiny flash of yellow against the dark green of a pine tree.
Continue reading “Goldcrest”Moles
Another video about the park’s burrowers.
Early Spring Gallery
by Julie Newblรฉ
I thought I’d send in some pictures of early spring in the Country Park for those who can no longer go there.
Fritillaries
The header picture was taken by Chris Seymour, the others by Clive Knight, Ian Bushell and Suzanne Humphries.
Disease resistant elms
The Covid-19 lockdown has interrupted our plans for the five disease resistant elms donated to the park by Butterfly Conservation as part of their rescue plan for the white letter hairstreak butterfly.
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Southwick Country Park Nature Reserve 