Broadland Country Park and Buxton Heath, 23 September 2021

There were just three of us on today’s Honeyguide outing, but what a perfect day it was as we arrived at the very new Broadland Country Park – announced in just March this year – between Horsford and Felthorpe. We started by looking over the heathland by the new picnic benches, which was colourful with heather, bell heather and western gorse. We didn’t go onto the heath as it’s fenced for grazing, part of the conservation management of the site. We took an anti-clockwise circuit around the country park, past another area also fenced for grazing and with sheep on view. We also heard cattle somewhere, but we didn’t see them. Dock bug (left) and spiked shieldbug (right). Garden or cross spider. Like a hot cross bun with legs, says Tessa. To start with we looked at the ID of various wild flowers, then swiftly switched to bugs on finding the two species in the photographs, names added after looking them up later. And we found a grey dagger moth caterpillar. We moved into a large area of