Suffolk Walking Festival - Rounding The Point

Dawn was away so it ended up being just William and myself, but I thought they would enjoy this - a walk around the Landguard Point Nature Reserve, led by the Ranger.

This was our route, starting at the entrance to the reserve and ending in the car park.

Our guide was Chris Ryde, who has been the ranger at the reserve for nearly 6 years.

Here are some photos from our guided tour.

As we were arriving we saw this container ship leaving port.

We assembled outside the Landguard Point Visitor Centre and View Point Cafe.

Here's Chris giving his introduction to the reserve and our walk,

We started along the acid grassland habitat. There were masses of these little Common Stork's Bill plants

Here Chris showed us one of the "bills" that allow the seeds to stick in the soil.

This is a spot favoured by the rare Stinking Goosefoot. None to be seen just yet - they don't usually appear until later in the year.

This, and several other bramble bushes nearby had been attacked.

This was the culprit, the bushes were being munched by Brown-Tail Moth caterpillars like this one.

Here are some Vipers Bugloss flowers.

There were lots of Bird's Foot Trefoil flowers both here in the grassland and on the coastal vegetated shingle.

This is the deadly Hemlock, It looks a bit like cow parsley but has a red streaks on the stem.

 This is Hoary Cress, it is believed to have been brought to the country in the stuffing in mattresses.

We ascended the man-made banks which were constructed so support shooting practice.

We found some fennel...

...and Houndstooth

There are great views in each direction.

Some Sea Kale in flower.

This is Tamarisk.

The Sea Poppy flowers only last a day each.

There was an abundance of pretty little Scarlet Pimpernel flowers.

We also saw and heard lots of bird-life, including song thrushes, robins and  white throats. There were plenty of linnets flying about and singing. Here is one sitting still for a moment.

But the bird species the site is famous for is the Ringed Plover , which nests on the shingle. Unfortunately they suffer from predation by birds-of-prey and even crows. Chris has resorted this year to putting a wire shelter over this nesting bird. Can you see it? It is pretty well camouflaged.

We visited the point...

 ...before heading to the View Point Cafe.

Alas, there was a huge queue so we decided to go for home for lunch... much to William's disappointment, I think!

Thanks Chris for a very informative and entertaining tour!

You can see more of my photos here on Flickr and more details of our route here on MapMyWalk.