Harvesting the savannah

A long journey this morning to the eastern edge of the Cotswolds with Glorious Grasslands to a major new site for the project. It’s in an extremely remote, and beautiful corner, so I was mightily surprised to see many cars in the field and people on the road. Turns out this was the location of a single long-tailed shrike blown off course from Kazakhstan and twitchers from all over have descended on the farm to take a look. The initial location by the field gate was extremely windy and exposed, so we hopped in Tom’s truck and drove to a nice sheltered spot in a dip on the far side, next to a woodland. This proved to be a good choice with a nice flat area to lay out the tarp. Cerian arrived shortly afterwards, and we soon had a production line going that kept the four of us busy. Plenty of cowslip, lady’s bedstraw, field scabious, wild marjoram and wild basil (something not often seen in large quantities in the middle of calcareous grasslands. Bringing in the harvest We were visited by…