Page 7 - August 2016 WN complete final version

Wide skies and a rich tapestry
Greenham Common is a place
of big skies and wide, cloud-
reflecting pools. Like dodder
over purple heather, its human
and natural history is ancient,
inseparable, intertwined. Like
the shimmering frisson of a
heat haze over sunset clays
and gravels, it emanates a
hard-won, joyful sense of
space and freedom. This wild
plateau, romantically bleak
one day and a riot of crackling
warmth and colour on another,
is our own wild moor.
It has long been a muse of
mine. I grew up here. I know
the flat gravelly table with its
Cattle graze under wide skies. (Rob Appleby)
Cliffside wonders
As a bee enthusiast, Dry
Sandford Pit in Oxfordshire is
one of my favourite places
to visit in late summer. The
towering cliff faces that line
my walk through the reserve
show fossilised evidence of
when this area was underwater
during the Jurassic Era but now
support a very different kind of
life some 100 million years later!
The cliffs are a metropolis
of bees that like to nest in its
soft, sandy substrate, making it
one of the best nature reserves
in the area to go looking for
interesting bees. I time my
visits to coincide with the sun
heating up the cliffs then watch
as female solitary bees dig out
their nests and provision it with
pollen and nectar. Males hover
around the nest sites hoping to
get lucky with a female.
Small black and red, wasp-
like bees can also be seen.
Auhust 2016
tablecloth folds of oakwood
and alder gullies. During the
Cold War, I watched the fences
go up and the nuclear bunkers
being built. I also watched
in awe as Peace Women
danced on top of them. Now
the bunkers are long-haired,
softened relics, part of the
narrative-landscape, echoing
the whaleback curves of
Watership Down beyond.
Sixteen years ago, when
the Common was returned to
the people and the wildlife,
I watched a short-eared owl
cruise down the old runway,
where once there were Vulcan
These are cuckoo bees that lay
their eggs in the nests of other often spend time sat in these
bee species. Another way to
see these wonderful bees is to
look for them on plants, and
Dry Sandford Pit is not lacking
in variety here either. From
limestone grassland which in
the spring is home to a variety
of bees that nest in empty snail remind me of mint humbugs
shells, to fenland that has its
own specialist plants such as
marsh helleborine and its own
Bombers. Sometimes, I’ll sit on
an old American fire hydrant,
its paint peeling like lichen,
and marvel that this very
special place did not become
a housing estate, or another
runway for London.
On a day when the clouds
build like billowy galleons over our latest-flowering orchid,
the downs, and the ponies
and commoners’ brindled,
dappled cattle graze among
the stands of gorse, it’s a
landscape Thomas Hardy
would recognise.
The flat, dry vista makes
walking accessible to all and,
as part of the 27km2 West
specialist invertebrates too. I
areas to watch the bees as they
go about their busy lives.
Later in autumn, as the ivy
comes into flower, it’s the time once and you’ll want to keep
of the ivy bee. The females
are the size of honey bees and
with their stripy, buff-coloured wildlife photographer. Visit:
bands of hair. They collect
pollen almost exclusively from
ivy, carrying this back to their
The cliffs at Dry Sandford Pit:
home to ivy bees. (Peter Creed)
Autumn lady’s-tresses. (Peter Creed)
Berkshire Living Landscape,
there are walks of endless
variety and length. In autumn,
it is good for migrant birds,
moths, fungi and, in good
years, perhaps thousands of
the spiralled white bells of
autumn lady’s-tresses.
I still can’t believe this wild
and lonely vista is ours. Here’s
to the freedom of the heath!
Nicola Chester, nature writer,
author and columnist. Visit:
nicolachester.wordpress.com
nests which they dig into the
soft, sandy banks. This species
can be quite abundant around
late September and is a real
spectacle. If you love bees then
this is the reserve for you; go
on coming back.
Ryan Clark, ecologist and
ryanclarkecology.wordpress.
com/blog
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