St Peter's Church
Leighton-cum-Minshull Vernon
Middlewich Road, CREWE, Cheshire. CW1 4RD
NATURE AND MINI BEAST TRAIL
Friday 15 August 2008
What could be nicer than a stroll through the countryside on a warm summer morning?
The ground was wet from all the rain we have had this summer holiday, but this did not dampen our enthusiasm as we embarked on our ‘safari’ around the church field.
We were led by Paul Griffiths and Elizabeth Hollinshead (from Nantwich Natural History Society) into the countryside; they helped us to identify the wildlife. The very first animal that we saw was a buzzard, soaring high in the sky above us. In the field we all kept are eyes peeled looking for the mini-beasts. We were armed with jam jars, butterfly nets and cameras.
There seemed to be lots of insects, especially moths. Some of the insects that we identified were: Speckled Wood butterfly, Shield beetle, Hover flies, Straw Dot moths, ladybirds and a Gatekeeper (or Hedge Brown butterfly).
The children were particularly interested in handling the small frogs that we found.
After the field walk we wandered around the churchyard. We found earwigs on top of a gravestone. We also saw ‘Harvestmen’, which are related to spiders because they have one body part and 8 legs like a spider.
On
the south side of the church is a ‘Cedar of Lebanon’, which has large,
resinous seed cones.
Under
the hedges we saw the poisonous berry spikes of ‘Lords and Ladies’
(Cuckoopint), Arum maculatum. There was also a very large fungus on a
tree stump. We left these alone!
We made our way back to the church hall for some refreshments and to make our ’Journey Stick’. On this we tied all the pieces of nature we collected on the way round e.g. feathers, twigs, grasses, cones, broken egg shells…
Then before we went home we checked the light trap, which had been left out all night. There was quite a good selection of insects, but Paul said that if it had been warmer last night we would have had many times more insects.
Thank you Paul and Elizabeth for a super morning.
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