1st Melbourn Guides

Taking our cue from the Rotary club, our Guide unit held a ‘Wild Nature’ photography competition. The girls went outside to snap close-ups of wild flowers and fungi, plus trees, woodland animals and beautiful landscapes. We had a total of 40 extremely impressive entries from sixteen girls; Kath Betts, Editor of Meldreth Matters kindly judged it and joined our Zoom meeting to give positive feedback and her top three choices. The winners were Laura with ‘Melbourn Sunrise’ and ‘Icy Hogweed’ (which are shown on the back cover of this month’s Meldreth Matters) and Izzy with ‘The Heart of Nature’. We kept the nature theme going for the rest of the evening, with a quiz and scavenger hunt and the girls made a wild bird feeder from a scooped out orange threaded with string (see example pictured). Burns Night is usually a celebration of Haggis and Whisky. Our Guide-appropriate event featured a quiz of obscure Scottish slang, an indoor golf competition and a live-action tutorial in the cooking of Scotch pancakes. The following week we explored communication old and new, starting with a quiz on the meaning of a range of emojis, then trying semaphore signalling. We finished with a lockdown-relevant Guide resource called ‘The Power of Positivity’: the girls chose a motivational message and created a poster to display at home or around the village. We finished this half term with a ‘Home Alone’ theme, covering various tasks which the girls should be able to do in the house. The girls learnt about different lightbulb fittings and how to change a lightbulb safely; they located their mains water stopcock and useful DIY tools and created a simple meal from store cupboard tinned food. We are hoping to start a Ranger unit for our small group of older Guides later this year, and would welcome another leader or helper. If you would like to know more about helping with Guides or Rangers, please contact me on (01763) 261443 or email melbournguides@gmail.com. You can also look on the girlguiding.org.uk website to find out more.

Hilary Marsh

Note from a Small Garden

Snowdrops have happily been in my mind a lot lately, so I am focusing on them in this edition of garden notes. This year they are a few weeks late and because of the very cold weather we are having as I write, they are lasting longer. The snowdrops in our garden mostly come from my parents’ garden in Nottinghamshire. If you dig up a small clump whilst they are still flowering and put them in a pot for the kitchen table, they last longer than cut flowers. Each year once flowering has finished, I have usually found the time to dig them up, divide them and spread them around or give a clump away. I waited for the day when there were enough snowdrops in the garden so that I could pick a big bunch for our family or friends! Different varieties of snowdrops have become ‘collectors’ items, as many are very beautiful and exchange for large sums! A number of years ago, one winter when we were in Richmond, we saw an old house behind enormous yew hedges saying open to visitors except Christmas Day. We opened the gate and, not finding anybody about, we explored the garden and came across an old apple orchard with carpets of the large snowdrop, Galanthus elwesii. What a wonderful sight; even though we had no camera with us, the memory is still absolutely clear in my mind. Eventually we found the owner, a lovely old lady who turned out to be the widow of Bobby James, the well-know gardener after whom the yellow climbing rose is named. Galanthis elwesii doesn’t naturalise as fast as the common Galanthius nivalis and its double variety, but it has larger leaves, just right for surrounding a posy of these much-loved winter flowers. There are carpets of snowdrops in the gardens of many of the older houses of this village. The churchyard has some, but there aren’t many on the grass verges, or under the horse chestnut tree by the stocks. I’m wondering if people with lots of snowdrops might donate some to say, the Veg Plus Club whose members could store them until such a time next autumn when anyone who is interested could help plant them around the village. Maybe we will safely be out of lockdown then and

could have a village celebration of some kind. The recreation ground is being landscaped shortly and I’m sure the people involved with this would be only too glad of a gift of bulbs and some help in planting them. I’d like to initiate this planting project in memory of my mother, a great gardener who over many years planted, divided and replanted snowdrops in the churchyard of a small village near the house we grew up in in Nottinghamshire. My niece sent me a picture of it in the local newspaper showing the carpet of flowers which has become a regular place to visit in February. Anyone interested, please email me.

Jobs for March

 Protect new shoots from slugs although hopefully we will not have too many of them as we’ve had some good frosts  Thin and cut back dogwoods for good winter stems next year  Plant out onions, shallots and early potatoes Good gardening from Jim and me! Julie Draper Juliedraper@dumbflea.co.uk

Melwood Conservation Group: 2021 AGM

Due to the current Covid-19 restrictions, we are unable to hold the AGM in person in February (the normal date). We therefore plan to hold it later in the year if the restrictions are lifted. If this doesn’t happen, we will try and arrange a virtual Zoom AGM. In the meantime, if anyone has any important issues they want to raise about the condition of the reserve, please contact Bruce Huett at brucehuett@compuserve.com or telephone (01763) 232855 (takes messages). We wish you all well and hope to be able to meet in the wood again in the not too distant future. As soon as it is feasible we will restart regular work parties.

Melwood Conservation Group

2021 Starts with Unexpected Bird Sightings in Meldreth

For a couple of days before the RSPB ‘Big Garden Bird Count’ we were blessed by a bit of warm sunny weather and for the first time since November, we were able to sit in the conservatory for lunch and a cup of tea later in the afternoon. In anticipation of the bird count, I had binoculars within reach and whilst sitting having lunch, I noticed a large bird in one of the beech trees between our garden and Melwood. A quick glance seemed to confirm that it was a buzzard and I took little more notice until it lifted off and flew towards Melwood. A broad white band at the base of the tail was immediately obvious showing that it was actually a rough-legged buzzard (Buteo lagopus), a far rarer bird. It also appeared to have longer wings than a common buzzard (Buteo buteo) but possible identification features of the underside could not be seen. This was only the third specimen I had ever seen. Roughlegged buzzards spend summer in more northern regions, such as the arctic and sub-arctic parts of Scandinavia but they migrate south in winter, with a few individuals remaining in the UK, generally in eastern counties. I have not seen any signs of this specimen since. Later in the day, as the sun started to sink, I came in from the garden and sat in the conservatory for a coffee, watching the blue tits, great tits and long-tailed tits on our feeders. Numbers of these three species have been very consistent with three individuals of each coming and going between the feeders and adjacent bushes for quite a few weeks. As I watched I noticed two other small slim birds in next door’s crab apple tree. Both were very active and I certainly needed the binoculars to get a useful view of them. To my surprise, I found that they were either chiff-chaff (Phylloscopus collybita) or willow warbler (Phylloscopus trochilus). These two are very difficult to separate if you don’t have the benefit of hearing their call but slightly greyer colour and a faint eye stripe suggested these were chiff-chaff. The willow warbler is usually a bit greener and the eye stripe is a little stronger. Both are summer visitors but the chiff-chaff is known to occasionally overwinter in the UK, whereas this does not happen more than very rarely for the willow warbler. The two birds seen seemed to be eating the frost-damaged crab apples but they are primarily insectivores and may have been benefitting from small flies attracted to the softened and blackbird-