Monthly Archives: November 2009

Tom Swire went through the woods and found amazing toadstools which looked like spoof items of confectionary from a bakery.

The toadstool is Fly Agaric (Amanita muscaria) which despite its attractive appearance is poisonous.

Clearing the Reed Sweet Grass

Steve Joul led an intrepid team of volunteers in clearing Reed Sweet Grass from the pond.  Reed Sweet Grass is an introduced species which is extremely vigorous and taking over the pond.  We cleared about a third of the pond – it is important not to remove too much so as to cause minimum disturbance to the small animals in the pond.

While Steve and his team were in the pond, another group of us were clearing vegetation from the Slabbering Baby.

Tom poses by the newly cleaned Slabbering Baby – a water fountain.

Afterwards a binbag or rubbish (cans, bottles and crisp bags) were picked up and disposed of.

Four happy Friends, the morning after the night before.  Last night it was Old Leo’s Rugby Club’s Fireworks Party and a group of us gathered for an hour to collect litter from the field and surrounding woods.

We wanted the woods to look their best for this afternoon’s nature walk – see the next post!