Mid-February 2022
Despite the miserable weather we decided to go for a family trip to Brandon Country Park, one of our favourite spots as it combines a good area for wildlife, a cafe, toilets and a play area. After visiting the latter three we had a short walk round, including feeding the ducks (although the Mandarin stayed amongst the vegetation, only emerging once it started raining).
I've been trying (and struggling) to get to grips with mosses locally, but am also keeping an eye out for liverworts (there's less of them!) and found some nice patches of Forked Veilwort (Metzgeria furcata) on the way round. The Norfolk aphid recorder had also given me a list of under-recorded species to look out for this year (although I was just into Suffolk on this visit) and several of them occur on Bamboo, so I checked out some clumps of Bamboo and found one of the three species Takecallis arundicolens.
