Promoting & Enhancing The Natural Beauty of the Sid Valley
Many people around the town are looking out for butterflies, they are taking part in the Big Butterfly Count, a citizen science project organised by Butterfly Conservation. Each year volunteers spend 15 minutes at a time recording how many butterflies they see in theirRead More
Leave a comment The River Sid is a thread of life through the valley supporting so many different animals and plants. If you walk quietly you might be lucky enough to see one of its most delightful residents, a small dark brown bird with a white front known as the Dipper. They are waryRead More
Leave a comment July is the month where, if you walk through a meadow, you hope to see insects pinging left and right to get out of your way. In the daytime these are most likely to be grasshoppers, but we have plenty of crickets and bush-cricketsRead More
Leave a comment There is a field of barley growing near Salcombe Regis. There is nothing apparently remarkable about that, but this crop is remarkable for two reasons, it is specifically for thatching and its perimeter is a haven for nature. Much is made these days aboutRead More
Leave a comment As we come to the end of June, our hedgerows and meadows are filling with yellow and white froth as members of the bedstraw family come into flower. Bedstraws are members of the Rubiaceae family, a name which translates as red plants because theRead More
Leave a comment Wildflower meadows are all the rage for many reasons: they can be a bright and cheerful spectacle when they are at their flowering peak in May and June, they produce nutritious winter food for livestock, but most importantly from my perspective, they are theRead More
Leave a comment If you are out and about as summer progresses you might notice the tops of tall grasses and other plants such as nettles wrapped into a ball by spider web. This will probably be the nest of one of our remarkable spiders the NurseryRead More
Leave a comment It may surprise people to learn that many of the small airfields across the country are excellent nature reserves, as are some of the military training grounds. The key is that many of these sites are left alone largely, people are kept out andRead More
Leave a comment They can be seen all year round, but May is when flowers of Red Campion really brighten up the local hedgerows, but we also have five close relatives living here in Sidmouth, we have: White Campion, Sea Campion, Bladder Campion, Ragged Robin and NottinghamRead More
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