10
Nary is now Broun Owl to the local Brownie pack and also
takes the local school children out for nature rambles.
Caroline enjoys her small village school with its 90
children from the outlying villages.
Hampshire is a very different county to Essex being mainly
rolling Chalk Downland with shallow alkaline soils on slopes
and acid clay soils on level plateaux. The chalkland
woods are either beech hangars on steep slopes or hazel
coppices (sometimes still cut for hurdles). The clay lands
have a more varied woodland type with a lot of oak. The
sands and clays of the Weald have a particularly rich
flora and we have already mentioned Furzefield Copse where
Herb Paris and Solomans Seal are abundant in places. South-
ern Hampshire with its Tertiary Clays and loams is more
wooded and very reminiscent of the more hilly terrain of
southern Essex south of the glacial limit around Brentwood
and Billericay and of course the New Forest is in this part
of the county.
Interestingly, the Hampshire Field Club is mainly concerned
with archaeology and geology although the New Forest has a
natural history section. The Hampshire and Isle of Wight
Trust for Nature Conservation caters for the naturalists
with several reserves in our vicinity. Deer, particularly
roe, are generally common but we have found few active
badger setts as yet and we suspect that modern agricultural
methods and the intensive use of woodlands for sporting may
have reduced the badger population. Mary is becoming
involved with the children's section of the Trust (the Watch
Club) and we have been out coppicing on one of the Trust's
local woodland reserves.
This must be enough news for now. We will always be pleased
to see fellow naturalists here. Our address is 48 Winchester
Road, Stroud, Petersfield, Hants (tel: Petersfield 66966),
but - be warned - visitors are expected to help milk the
goat]