Pete's Walks - Thursley Common
This wasn't really a walk (I covered maybe four miles in about 6 hours!), but a meeting of nature lovers from the WildAboutBritain web site (thanks for organising it again, Wild-Woman!). It was a two-day event held over a weekend, but I only went down for the Saturday (24th July 2010). This was the second time I'd been to this event (you can read about last year's here) - there were ten of us altogether, including four people I'd met there last year.
Again 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. Apart from the wonderful wild-life, the Common is a very pleasant and interesting place to walk. It is one of the few remaining fragments of Surrey heath, and consists of lowland heath, mire and woodland. The ground was noticeably drier than last year - several small pools we had seen then were partially or fully dried up this year. We did a circular walk in the morning, stopped for an hour for lunch back at the car park around 1pm, then did a longer circuit in the afternoon.
Anyway, here are a few shots of the common, taken as we wandered around.
And here are a few of the things we found:
Common Lizard
Small Red Dragonfly
Bog Asphodel
Emperor Dragonfly
Common Darter
Four-spotted Chaser
Black Darter
Keeled Skimmer
Large Red Dragonfly
Marsh St John's-Wort
Green Tiger Beetle
White-legged Damselfly
Emerald Damselfly
New sightings for me included Brown Argus butterfly, White-legged and Small Red damselflies, and Golden-ringed Dragonfly (couldn't get a photo of this, unfortunately). Other sightings included a Little Egret and a Wasp Spider.
It was a very enjoyable day out, and I hope the event will be repeated next year!