After working over the weekend it was nice to have a bank holiday off for a change. The weather was lovely and sunny but the north easterly wind made it feel more like early February than late May. I resisted a trip along the coast chiefly to avoid the bank holiday traffic as most of the A1 is single carriageway and the locations I like to visit will still be there on a normal day off. I decided to head 10 miles inland to Harwood forest. It has always been a great haunt of mine. I hope to have many posts from this lovely forest. Today was a family affair so the wildlife took something of a back seat. We enjoyed a nice picnic and the only people we encountered were two ladies on hoseback. Still plenty to see. I only saw one species of butterfly; Orange tip but there were dozens of them enjoying the warmth of the sheltered rides. On the bird front I saw 2 crossbills, 2 Buzzards and a Raven. I also saw a new plant; Sand spurrey, it is a plant of gravelly river banks but in recent years it can be found on forest tracks presumably the seeds spreading by materials brought into the forest to make roads. I have included pictures of a Roe deer which we managed to get close to despite the noise we were making, Cottongrass and Winter's gibbet.
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