Pete's Walks - Thursley Common

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This wasn't really a walk (I covered maybe three miles in about 8 hours!), but a meeting of nature lovers from the WildAboutBritain web site (thanks for organising it Wild-woman!). It was a two-day event held over a weekend, but I only went down for the Sunday (2nd August, 2009) as the weather forecast had been pretty bad for the Saturday. Several others had the same idea, as there were about 9 or 10 of us on Sunday, whereas only four had turned up on Saturday and indeed had got pretty wet in the afternoon.

It took me about an hour and 20 minutes to reach Thursley Common in Surrey, a straightforward drive down the M1, M25 and the A3. I'd never seen a habitat like the common before - it reminded me of some of the heaths I know in Suffolk, but it also had wet and boggy bits, making it a very varied site for wildlife. Dragonflies and Damselflies were the main targets people wanted to spot, though various other insects were high on the list too. The common has several types of reptile, and is home to birds such as Dartford Warbler, Hobby and Nightjar. In fact we saw hardly any birds at all (there was a Buzzard high overhead at one point, and a couple of people saw a Common Redstart), and there were surprisingly few butterflies about (Silver-studded Blue is a speciality here). But we saw plenty of insects of various sorts, and I came across maybe six or seven new species of Dragonfly or Damselfly, plus five or six new wildflowers.

Anyway, here are a few shots of the common, taken as we wandered around.

Picture omitted