First Harvest Mouse survey of 2018

Late in the afternoon I left Wrotham and got down to the Hadlow Access Trail pull-in on Victoria Road.

I found a lovely gilled bracket near the base an Ash tree with quite a lot of Ash Dieback around the area of the small bridge from the trail. Best bet is Pleurotus ostreatus at the moment.

Put up what sounded like a Mistle Thrush from the riverside towards the copse at Hayse Farm.

I then had a lovely chat with a kind lady from the Bourneside Oast, who said that the College Fisheries people had said that she had the most diverse stretch of river, not straightened as perhaps it had been further down.

Jackie and had put up No Hunting signs on the corners of their property.

But no sign of suitable habitat for harvest mouse nests.

The Bourne meanders

This was one of the nicer afternoons of February, although not as warm as the previous two days.  So I took the footpath through the College's equine unit until I reached the meadow just upstream through which the River Bourne meanders. The beautiful meadow and the river meanders edged with alders are just gorgeous, even in the thin winter sunshine of a February afternoon.

The occasional clump of snowdrops brightens the banks. Here you can also see the "witches broom" of some of the alder bases - a few have this dense thicket effect that may be physiological.