Tonight's Stargazing cancelled by Wessex Astronomical Society cancelled due to total cloud predicted. Next planned event (subject to weather conditions) Saturday 26th March at 19:30.
A lovely clear start to the day with bright blue skies. My stroll took me along the Pine-Cliff walk; an earlier name for the coast path route through the woodland. I feel that we can use this name once again; with the restored views of mature Austrian Pines along the clifftop, and a further twenty sapling which were planted yesterday.
I was pleased to discover a ‘new’ English Oak that I hadn’t noticed before. Given away by its heavy buds and cracked fissured bark; the tree has been revealed by our tree contractors who will be working through the woodland until the end of the week.
Further down the woodland, the removal of two Holm Oak, has opened the canopy to a small copse of Yew trees. Their reddish bark and small green needles now alight in the morning Sun. These trees grow very slowly, so are probably a similar age as many of the towering giants at Sunnydale. They are also very long-lived so will probably still be here long after many of the trees in the woodland.
Lords and Ladies have begun to sprout all through the woodland, and scattered splashes of yellow abound from the flowering Daffodils and Primrose. Celandines will be next to join the display of yellow, with the first sunny petals beginning to open in the Aviary Glade.
My senses are almost overwhelmed by the smell of Wild Garlic and birdsong around Sunnydale. Robins, Wrens, and Great Tits can all be heard bellowing out their soft tunes. Somewhere in a tall Sycamore tree, the drills of a Greater Spotted Woodpecker echoes out, disrupting the calls of the perched Carrion Crows.
Swathes of Creeping Comfrey have blossomed along the mossy banks of the stream. A bright Scarlet Wax Cap caught my eye underneath a rotting log with a single Woodlouse clambering along the top. The stream meanders through sunlit banks and a glade of Three-cornered Leek before disappearing towards the sea.