Bog mosses

Another fine start to the day, chilly, but not as frosty as Friday. Pete and I went to Holme Fen, partly for the exercise and partly to see what was happening with the management of a couple of areas formerly supporting heathy grassland. Sadly, after years of effort by the fen staff and volunteers, the annual cutting shas not been carried out for a couple of years and now both areas are covered with a thicket of birch seedlings some 2m high.  

Coincidentally the Peterborough Conservation Volunteers were out on site and we spent some time chatting with a couple of our friends who are regular members. They were removing birch from the edge of a ditch lying adjacent to the larger grassland area, prior to a machine coming in to clear the  remainder of the area. Hopefully, this will actually be done, but a couple of years of neglect have made the task much larger than it should have been and there will be an awful lot of birch brash to dispose of.

While we were there we visited the last fragment of raised mire left in Cambridgeshire, a tiny area that had been overtaken by willow scrub. Major scrub clearance was carried out a couple of years ago, and it was very encouraging to see plenty of Cross-leaved Heath and some vigorous patches of Sphagnum colonising the areas of bare peat that had been exposed.

After lunch I put the Christmas pudding and Christmas cake on to cook - the house is now smelling wonderfully fragrant...