Buzzing around at the National Wildflower Centre

Hello again. The skies are looking very grey over the National Wildflower Centre today but so far it's staying dry. Seen a little bit of nature already, first of all I saw a heron flying over the M57 on my drive in. I love seeing herons in flight, they always look to big to be able to stay up there and remind me of the postman stork in Dumbo.
There was the usual mix of magpies and woodpigeons on the cricket pitch too and a great big slug waiting to greet me at the door. It must have been as long as my hand! I don't know what type it was, in fact until yesterday I didn't realise there was different types.
I took part in a bumblebee recognition workshop yesterday at Norton Priory which was really interesting and as part of it we went outside to see how many bees and what types we could now identify. We went into the Norton Priory's wildflower meadow which is still full of red, white, yellow and blue flowers and looks amazing and which was planted by the National Wildflower Centre! It's a small world.

Now I'm hoping I might be able to spot and identify some bumblebees at the centre when I'm on my break. It's trickier at this time of year as a lot of their colours fade with age, a lot of the time their bum colour is the giveaway!




Last week we had a group - many of whom had travelled from Stockport - here who were taking part in one of the centre's free HOW TO... workshops, this one was How To make a wildflower meadow. I took some photographs of them on their way round, including these two.



I wonder if they spotted this caterpillar on their way round, I'd love to know what type it is, leave a comment if you can help!
Well I think that's all for this week. Don't forget although the centre is now closed for the season our Cornflower Cafe and conference centre is open all year round. For more details visit our website www.nwc.org.uk
Bye for now.