We hope you are keeping safe and well. The current lockdown feels like the hardest yet, with the short days and wintery weather to contend with – however the hills are always open for your daily exercise and even in winter nature provides ever-changing interest, as these photos taken recently by Mike Poulton illustrate. With spring on the way, there will be even more to see so keep your eyes open when you’re out and about on the hills!
We hope you have all been keeping safe and well during the lockdown and that nature has been able to provide you with some relief. Mike Poulton from the Friends of Rowley Hills has been able to carry out some butterfly transect walks on the hills while doing his daily exercise, and so far this season has recorded Orange-tip, Speckled Wood, Green-veined White, Small White, Brimstone, Peacock and Small Tortoiseshell butterflies, and Burnet Companion moth.
On the bird front there’s been a pair of Ravens flying over the site (invariably pursued by Carrion Crows), Whitethroat, Lesser Whitethroat, Blackcap, Green Woodpecker, Song Thrush, Swifts and all of the usual common species. FORH member Nick Horton heard a Garden Warbler and a Grasshopper Warbler when he was walking in the hills at the beginning of May.
Another of our members, Mike Siviter, took a fabulous sunrise photograph from Portway Hill in early May. When he got home he sent it to the local BBC television station and it appeared on the BBC’s lunchtime local weather forecast. He has also sent us this rather good photograph of a Whitethroat that he had taken up there.
Friends of Rowley Hills 