Working ponies

We counted a massive 19,500 flowering stems of our speciality, Chiltern Gentian, at Dancersend Nature Reserve this summer and these two characters are partly why they are doing so well. Here you see Goldie, the New Forest pony, and Ollie, the Exmoor pony who have grazed the site for each of the last 3 winters. They have just arrived back now the gentians have mostly set seed and are starting their work for this year, keeping the coarse grasses at bay, browsing the scrub and chopping up the ground in places to provide a good seed bed for this year's flush of new gentian seed. They seemed a bit grumpy today, but I put that down to the silly noises of hoards of hysterical pheasants that seem to have taken refuge from the neighbouring shoot.