Bonsai Heaven

On 10th May I attended a Tai Chi workshop at a beautiful place in Surrey called "Herons Centre". In addition to workshop space, the centre has 7 acres of grounds which includes an award-winning Bonsai nursery, landscaped Japanese gardens, orchards and a koi carp pond. "It is literally a Bonsai heaven  for anyone interested in the pastime" (www.herons.co.uk). The founder, Peter Chan, is author of "The Bonsai Bible" and numerous other books, and holds 21 Chelsea Flower Show Gold Medals - he knows his stuff! Even if Bonsai isn't one of your hobbies, the trees and grounds at the Heron Centre are well worth a visit.

Bonsai bonanza at the Heron Bonsai Nursery!

Some of these bonsai were over 100 years old.

Herons Centre also has landscaped Japanese gardens,a koi carp pond and an ancient orchard.

A heron!

Almost like being abroad...

The Zhen Wei Academy's Tai Chi workshop was very interesting, covering the whole day and including Qigong, the Yang 85 (long form) and Yang Shi Taiji Duida (rare two-man set). I'm currently training in Shaolin Mizong kung fu with Zhen Wei Academy, rather than Tai Chi. As someone who has done very little Tai Chi before, working through the entire Yang 85 sequence in one day was intense and challenging but I really enjoyed it. Being able to run through the whole sequence at the end felt like quite an achievement; doing this with the rest of the group out in the landscaped grounds of the Heron Centre was very memorable.

Part of the group working on a rare two-man Tai Chi sequence.

Group shot from Zhen Wei Academy's facebook page.

Bioblitz Results

The One Tree Hill Bioblitz, at Langdon Hills Country Park, took place on 3rd May. A Bioblitz, for those who haven't come across one before, is a group effort to find as many species as possible in a given location. We also had over 30 people involved in the event, and for some this was their first experience of surveying for wildlife! It was great to see so much enthusiasm from so many people.

I was responsible for organising the event, and handling the records afterwards - a significant undertaking in itself! After I spent some time working on our species lists from the event (attempting to get identification down to species level, and eliminating duplicates) we had a list of over 136 different species from roughly 3 hours of surveying. That's a new species found for every 80 seconds! The information from this event is being passed on to local and national databases that monitor wildlife, increasing what we know about the wildlife in the area and thus helping us to protect it.

Prizes for the Best Guess (for guesses closes to the final species total) and Best Blitzer (for greatest overall contribution to the recording) have been decided, and Bioblitz t-shirts will be awarded to winners at the next big Country Park event, which is the Friends of Langdon Hills group's Curry & Glow-worm night on 3rd July. For more information about this event or the Friends group, you can contact Langdon Hills Country Park on langdon.hills@btconnect.com or 01268 542 066.

 

BNA Conference 2015: Bugs, Birds and Antlers

The British Naturalists' Association held their national conference in Epping Forest yesterday. The BNA is 110 years old this year, which makes it an association of some standing by any account. It attracted as speakers Nick Baker, Professor Ian Newton, and Norma Chapman, outstanding naturalists all.

BNA 2015 National Conference held in Forest School, Epping Forest

I attended the conference with my partner Natasha, as my second BNA conference and her first. The day commenced in the Great Hall of Forest School with an introduction from BNA chairman Roger Tabor, and then we dived straight into the Field Workshops. Attendees had to choose which session to attend, ranging from "Botany and Bats" to nature haiku writing, which was no easy task! Natasha and I elected to attend the Spider Safari first, followed by a session of Owl Pellet Analysis. Attendees then reconvened in the Great Hall for a buffet lunch, and this was superb.

The afternoon consisted of presentations and talks in the Theatre. A number of awards and fellowships were received by the worthy, and then attendees were treated to talks from Nick Baker on 'Building a Naturalist', Norma Chapman on 'Deer in Britain', and Professor Ian Newton on 'Bird Migration'.

The conference was excellent throughout, and I would very much recommend attending one! If you want to know more about the BNA, you can visit their website at www.bna-naturalists.org.

Nick Baker receiving a BNA Fellowship Honoris Causa

Nick Baker delivers his talk, 'Building a Naturalist'