BCP Countryside

14/10/2026

🐝 Wildlife Wednesday - A wasp nest raided!

It looks like an animal has been digging for dinner, unearthing this wasp nest in search of a tasty snack. Badgers are well known for digging up wasp nests, using their strong claws to get at the protein-rich larvae and pupae inside.

Although wasps sometimes get a bad reputation, they play an important role in our ecosystems. Adult wasps hunt other insects, helping to control populations of caterpillars, flies and other invertebrates. They also visit flowers to feed on nectar, contributing to pollination.

Even a destroyed nest has a role to play, providing a meal for wildlife and returning nutrients to the soil. Nature is full of these fascinating interactions, where one animal's home becomes another animal's dinner! 🌿

13/10/2026

09/10/2026

One of our favourite events of the year to pop into your diaries!

07/10/2026

Wilidlife Wednesday - 🐭 A tiny home in the grass!

This beautifully woven ball, found during one of our weekly volunteer work parties, is a harvest mouse nest, built a few feet above the ground among tall grasses and vegetation.

Harvest mice are Britain’s smallest rodent, weighing just 4–8 grams. They use their prehensile tails and grasping feet to climb through tall vegetation, where they feed on seeds, grasses, and insects.

The females carefully weave their nests from strips of grass, creating a spherical structure that provides a safe, sheltered place to raise their young.

But these tiny mammals depend on increasingly vulnerable habitats. The loss of rough grassland, hedgerows, field margins, and other areas of tall vegetation can leave them without the food, shelter, and nesting sites they need.

🌾 Protecting wildlife doesn’t always mean protecting the spectacular. Sometimes it means leaving a patch of grass uncut, allowing a field margin to grow, or preserving a strip of dense vegetation.

This little nest is a reminder that when we protect the habitat, we protect the wildlife that calls it home. 💚

📍Kinson Common

Matt

06/10/2026

Definitely been noticing the changing of the seasons today.

The mist highlighted so many glistening spider webs across the heath this morning. It's a lovely reminder that every season brings new beauty and small details to notice around us 🕸️

📍 Canford Heath Nature Reserve

30/09/2026

🍄 Wildlife Wednesday – Mushrooms in cow pats! 🤔

Cow pats might not seem like an obvious place to look for wildlife, but they can be surprisingly rich little ecosystems!

As cattle graze our nature reserves, their dung provides an important food source and habitat for a whole community of fungi and invertebrates. Look closely and you may spot clusters of mushrooms growing directly from cow pats, including species of dung-loving fungi specially adapted to breaking down this nutrient-rich material.

These fungi play an important role in recycling nutrients back into the soil, while the dung itself supports dung beetles, flies and their larvae, which in turn provide food for birds and other wildlife.

This is just one of the benefits of conservation grazing. By grazing vegetation and naturally adding dung to the landscape, cattle help create a diverse range of habitats and resources for wildlife – from short-grazed areas and patches of taller vegetation to areas of bare ground, to these miniature ecosystems in a cow pat! 🐄🍄

23/09/2026

🌺 Wildlife Wednesday – Great Willowherb

Here is a very common but nonetheless beautiful wildflower for you to spot while out and about on our nature reserves and greenspaces!

With large bright pink flowers and a cross shaped stamen at the centre, Great Willowherb (Epilobium hirsutum) is a popular favourite of our pollinators. It is a food plant for our equally bright pink native Elephant Hawkmoth too! 🐛

Its leaves feel like silk so given it a gentle stroke! It favours damp places but can often be found in the cracks on the edges of pavements too! 💦

Also known as Hairy Willowherb, Codlins-and-cream, Apple-pie or Cherry pie because the rosy-pink flowers and creamy centres look like apple desserts. 🍏

16/09/2026

Wildlife Wednesday – Four-spotted orb weaver 🕷️

The four-spotted orb weaver (Araneus quadratus) is the heaviest spider species in the UK by body mass. Females are particularly impressive, being substantially larger and heavier than the much smaller males.

Their colour can vary from greenish-yellow and orange through to reddish-brown, but they can usually be recognised by the four pale markings on the abdomen.

They are particularly associated with areas of dense vegetation, including gorse, heather, and long grass, where they build their characteristic orb webs to catch insects.

They construct their large, circular webs among the vegetation, using them to capture jumping and flying insects and other small invertebrates. The spider then waits nearby, detecting vibrations in the web when prey becomes trapped.

Despite their size, four-spotted orb weavers are harmless to people and are a fascinating part of our grassland and heathland wildlife. 🕷️🌿

📍 Turbary Common
- Matt