In the place of our first indoor meeting of the autumn, but happening on Wednesday 11 September at 5.30 pm, we have an evening visit to a new small private nature reserve at Swallowcliffe, at the home of society members Esther and Matthew Phillips.

Numbers will be limited so please email us if you can join us. Please note our first talk of the season, on the 12 September, has been postponed to a future date to be announced.

​The Talks page and programme have been updated.
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Our trail camera project is underway and the camera has been placed in the gardens and farms of a few members, who have shared with us some of their best captures. Here is a selection of them!

If you would like to find out what wildlife visits your property, please find out more about our project and how you can access this camera - for free! All the information is on our wildlife camera project's website section.

One plant that seems to have done particularly well this year – perhaps it likes the rain - is hedge bindweed. This is a very distinctive plant with its numerous, large, bright white, conical flowers which clamber through hedgerows and small bushes. It is a member of the same family as Morning Glory, which I grow from seed each year; I only wish my plants were as vigorous and prolific as their wild cousins. We take bindweed for granted because it grows so well, or hold it in contempt because it can be such a pest, but its blooms, which keep going all through summer, really are fantastic. They provide a great source of pollen for bees and the plant’s ample foliage provides food for the caterpillars of the convolvulus hawk moth. This splendid insect has a 10 cm wingspan, a pink banded abdomen, and an extremely long proboscis. This allows it to feed on flowers that no other British moth can, so watch out for them on the long tube-like flowers of tobacco plants (Nicotiana) if you have them in your garden. It is a frequent migrant that visits us in late summer, but does not overwinter successfully in the UK.

The field bindweed, has smaller, pink, or pink-striped flowers and is more a plant of farmland, waste spaces and roadsides. Rather than climbing, it is more likely to spread and scramble laterally, but doesn’t develop into the all-engulfing tangle of the hedge bindweed. The roots of both species spread far underground, are brittle and can regenerate from the smallest sections. This is what makes them so difficult to eradicate once they have become established in the soil; when all else is dug up, the smallest piece remaining can start the reinvasion. Indeed, if you google bindweed, you will get a lengthy list of links offering advice on how to get rid of it.
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Bindweed may not produce a great deal of seed, but these can remain viable for years. So, combined with regeneration from broken roots, and the ability to grow rapidly by using anything it can lay its tendrils on for support rather than wasting resources on strengthening its stem, this makes it a highly successful plant found virtually anywhere. We just need to overlook the problems it causes gardeners and appreciate it for its flowers.