NEW – We have pleasure in introducing NATURE NOTES, by kind permission of Brenda Hudson.

Observations, past, recent or present on local flora and fauna will be shared from time to time on behalf of local and long residing resident Brenda.
We hope you enjoy them!

Coming back from the Crowfield Flower Festival I passed a couple of fields full of Phacelia still in full bloom at the end of last month. This charming plant is grown as a  great attraction for pollinators and when ploughed into the soil a useful green manure. It also featured in a number of the flower displays in the church. Arriving home I found a large dragonfly on a shrub beside my front door. I think it might have been a Gold-ringed dragonfly which is a hawker and is often found resting far from water. Another visitor well away from water was heard by a visitor using a device on her phone to identify bird songs in my patio. We were surprised when this heard a Moorhen as we are not near a pond. I mentioned this to a friend who had been netting birds at Landguard Point some time ago and one of the birds netted was a Moorhen! This bird had been ringed in Denmark, so perhaps Moorhens can travel a great deal further than I had imagined.
The churchyard still has both types of Scabious in flower and a large amount of Small quaking-grass. There is still plenty to attract pollenators as a knowledgeable investigator was able to report recently. These were nearly all ground-nesting bees of which they found a total of 14 species! A number of them were Bumble bees which one can still see in our gardens. The churchyard is certainly a treasure house for wildlife. 
Our local hedgehog is still active as they eat the mealworms that my neighbour and I put out for them. Although they hedgehogs are endangered this one has avoided traffic and predators so far even though hedgehogs can walk 1 mile at a time!. As the weather gets colder they well may be hibernating.
Brenda Hudson. 1st September 2025

This article was first published in the Ten Village News.