Warnham Nature Reserve 27 May 2022

Warnham Nature Reserve is one of those nearby places I should visit more often.  It's just outside Horsham and is about half an hour's drive away.   I hadn't visited for well over two years and they have a smart new Visitor Centre now.   

The Camera Club has outings fairly regularly and I try to go on them if I can.   This was a special request visit by one of the members and it proved to be a great morning for those of us who went.  The weather was perfect. 

There is a large lake, so lots of waterfowl; ducklings as well at this time of year.   And if you're lucky, you can see a kingfisher. There are a few 'hides' around the lake.  I don't have a huge zoom lens, so I have to stick to the waterfowl close to the edge.  Unfortunately, they seemed to be too far away for me this time.   There are also bird feeding stations, which suited my camera better!  

I'm not sure what this frog is - there were a couple of them in a very shallow water life pond outside the new visitor centre.  The frog is about 2" in size.

Rat feeding on the seed scattered under the feeders

A pair of bullfinches

Rat drinking

A pair of damselflies

Herons across the lake

Dragonfly

You can see the new Visitor Centre in the background

Making a splash

Heron coming in to land on the feeding island

It's obviously done this before!

Grass snake - he slipped away pretty fast when my camera shutter clicked

A pair of mallards glimpsed through the bushes

This is apparently a Tri-Helix 

Woodpecker feeding

Bullfinch waiting his turn at the feeders

Oh oh!

He's almost camouflaged

Photos were taken with my Nikon D60 camera.

I think I will remember May 2022 as The Month of The Snakes!   At the beginning of the month I started to remove a tarpaulin which was covering some bags of compost just outside the greenhouse and found a snake under it. It was a dry mud colour with orange markings.   I didn't hang about!   When I went back about ten minutes later the snake had gone.  A couple of days later I was putting up the shading in the greenhouse and having a general tidy up.  Lifting some bags of perlite, horticultural grit and vermiculite out of a box on the lower shelf this appeared:-

To say I was unnerved is putting it mildly.   This box is right behind my potting bench and I am often just dipping my hand in a bag for a handful of this or that.    The young lad next door works in the local woods and I asked him if he could identify this skin. He immediately said "adder"!   He often sees them in the woods.   I am now quite wary when I am working in the greenhouse - I make a lot of noise with a stick before entering.  I now also look into each bag before I dip my hand in.   I did wonder why I had not caught any mice in the greenhouse over the winter!

I am very surprised that an adder would be down in the village - they are normally found in light woodland or heathland.   We have both a couple of miles away.  One of the Camera club members who lives in the next road to our road said he had seen adders in his garden over the years.   

For anyone reading this who is not in the UK, the adder is our only poisonous snake.    

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