Flora and fauna – Wood anemone
This time of year the wood anemone is popping up all over New Mills. It’s thought to be a sure sign of ancient woodlands and also the Romans picked the first flowers of the season to ward off fevers The flowers come in shades of white, pink and purple and large swathes of them can be seen around Goytside...
Flora and fauna : mining bees
Spring has well and truly sprung here in New Mills with the surrounding fields and hedgerows now blossoming. This along with the excellent weather recently has brought out some very busy bees. There is no mistaking the tawny mining bee: a honeybee-sized ginger species with a thick orange coat and a black face. They feast on shrubs ranging from willow, hawthorn and blackthorn (varieties we have planted in our recent tree...
Flora and fauna – the Pixie Cup
Who would have thought that literally hours after the coldest weekend for many years today you would be walking in lovely Spring sunshine admiring everything that mother nature has to show. If you look closely (very closely) at the miles of dry stone walls in and around New Mills you will find what is often referred to as a Pixie Cup in amonst the mosses and lichens. It is itself part of the lichen family with many varieties of...
Flora and fauna – Ouzels
In my book there are wild creatures, and there are WILD creatures. The former include bluetits, rabbits, robins, blackbirds and so on…the sort we see every day, but the latter, they are the ones that haven’t seen much of humankind. They spend most of their lives in wild, sometimes desolate places and scarper at the slightest disturbance. Fieldfares and redwings, our winter-visiting thrushes, curlews, wheatears and other birds of the...
Flora and fauna – the field vole
Spring must be on its way if the voles are starting to nest – enjoy this short interlude where life is so simple in the gardens of New Mills
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