All of a buzz

Today I attended a bumblebee ID course run by Bumblebee Conservation Trust at the Derbyshire Wildlife Trust education centre in Matlock Bath.  The course was great, and I'd thoroughly recommend you keep an eye out in case they run the course again.  Before the course began I had chance to look around Matlock Bath Woods cSAC.  The woodland grows on a limestone slope and is covered in wild garlic, bluebells and other woodland flowers.  Plenty of stock doves appear to be breeding here too, along with a blue tit actively 'washing' itself by rubbing through wet hawthorn leaves rather than finding a puddle to bath in.

By starting with the 'big 8' species and how to ID them we moved on to a walk around the local area putting our new skills to use.  We ended with 5 species on our walk; buff-tailed, tree, gypsy cuckoo, red-tailed and garden.  I now hope to put these skills to good use on Trust nature reserves and increase the records for the species.

On my way home I called in at the Trust's Thorswood nature reserve and finally found early-purple orchids, a species I've wanted to catch up with for a long time.  In the end I found 15 flowering spikes on the side of a mound.  The mountain pansies are still flowering nicely, and hopefully in a month or so the reserve should be filled with other orchids including common spotted, greater butterfly and frog.