On a lovely sunny day (though with a cold easterly wind) 16 members and friends – including two children which was fantastic – gathered for a meeting that was primarily to see the spring wildflowers. After a brief diversion to see the long-established garden escape Abraham, Isaac and Jacob on the roadside, Gill led the party along the flank of Ashberry Wood from the farmstead, down across the water meadows to Bow Bridge, then returned through waterside meadows to Rievaulx village, returning along the road passing the Abbey on the way.

Abraham, Isaac and Jacob

Spurge laurel

Ashberry Wood is a surviving patch of ancient woodland on limestone, and has a particularly rich flora. We saw two of the local specialities just inside the gate: green hellebore and spurge laurel – which is in fact a Daphne species, and a little further along the mountain currant. We discussed the differences between the early or wood dog violet and its very similar relative common dog violet and enjoyed the primroses and wood anemones amongst many other flowers. We recorded over 120 species (several of them in leaf only - many thanks to Melanie for id’ing most of these. There are a good number of plants that were not yet showing, for instance baneberry which is known to be in these woods, so this is a conservative estimate of the total number of species present. We saw a group of at least 9 fallow deer in the wood.

Wood anemones

Wood dog violet

Town Hall Clock or Moschatel

Common dog violet

The meadows along the riverside did not show such a variety of plants but made for a very pleasant walk back towards Rievaulx, and provided some splendid views of the Abbey ruins.

We saw or heard a good number of birds, and were able to watch a nuthatch entering a prospective nest hole – we think this was the female as the other bird, the male, was calling loudly from a nearby tree (below).

There were not many insects about presumably as the air was so cold. We did see peacock and small tortoisesehll butterflies, a 7-spot ladybird, a buff-tailed bumblebee, an Andrena mining bee, a St. Mark’s fly and in interesting beetle – the Red-breasted carrion beetle Oiceoptoma thoracicum (thanks Jordan for the id). According to info on the web it is found on or under the carcasses of birds and small mammals, often in woodland habitats, and curiously enough this species does not eat the material itself, but both adults and larvae hunt for larvae of other insects, such as flies, eating from the remains.

Small tortoiseshell and St. Mark’s fly

Red-breasted carrion beetle Oiceoptoma thoracicum