Spring day for Highwoods walk

Around 30 visitors turned up for the guided walk led by Alan Malpass which took them through the woods full of the joys of Spring.

Alan said: "We always do it at this time of year because the woods are at their best. We will see lots of bluebells, and there are still some wood anemones, celandines, bugles, yellow archangels and others as well. We hope we might pick up a few migrant birds also because they are well in now. And on a sunny morning like this there might even be a few butterflies about.

"It is a lovely Spring day, but we have been doing this for about 15 years and only had to cancel once because of weather - that was a winter one when there was a howling gale, and we thought it was dangerous. But we have never been rained off - it is amazing."

Alan describes the Highwoods walk, which is an hour and a half through stunning natural scenery, as a "lovely" experience.

"Also a great advantage of having the whole series, and with so many pairs of eyes, is you see so much more...People are looking at different things, and you tend to see much more because of it. And there is always the interesting possibility we might find something we have never recorded before."