Balls Wood
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Balls Wood
Balls Wood is a nature reserve managed by the Herts and Middlesex Wildlife Trust in Hertford Heath in East Hertfordshire. The wood was purchased by the Trust from the Forestry Commission. The northern part has mature coppiced hornbeams together with ash and field maple. There are breeding birds such as great spotted woodpeckers and sparrowhawks. The site also has open rides which provide a habitat for insects such as white admiral butterflies and wild flowers including bluebells, wood anemones and early purple orchid ''Orchis mascula'', the early-purple orchid, early spring orchis, is a species of flowering plant in the orchid family, Orchidaceae. Description ''Orchis mascula'' is a perennial herbaceous plant with stems up to high, green at the base and ...s. There are many ponds which support aquatic invertebrates. There is access by going along The Roundings from London Road past Hertford Heath nature reserve, turning right along Elbow Lane and left into Balls Wood. ...
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Herts And Middlesex Wildlife Trust
Herts and Middlesex Wildlife Trust manages over 40 nature reserves covering nearly north of London, in Hertfordshire and the historic county of Middlesex, part of which is divided between the London boroughs of Barnet, Enfield, Harrow and Hillingdon. It has over 21,000 members, and is one of 46 Wildlife Trusts across the UK. It is a Registered Charity, with its Registered Office in St Albans, and had an income in the year to 31 March 2014 of over £1.5 million. The trust's activities include managing nature reserves, advising landowners on how to manage their land for wildlife, commenting on planning applications, advising planning authorities and campaigning to protect wildlife. The trust also encourages people to be active volunteers helping to maintain nature reserves. The first preparatory meeting of what was to become the trust was held on 16 November 1963, and the Hertfordshire & Middlesex Trust for Nature Conservation was incorporated on 9 October 1964. By 1970 ...
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Hertford Heath
Hertford Heath is a village and civil parish near the county town of Hertford in Hertfordshire, England. The population at the 2011 Census was 2,672. Geography It is located on a heath above the River Lea valley, on its south side. Almost all of the village is 90 metres (300 feet) above sea level, with most of the surrounding fields being arable farm land, or cattle and horse grazing. History Hertford Heath was once a settlement of the Catuvellauni tribe, before Julius Caesar invaded in 54 BC. The original hamlet of Hertford Heath was the southern part of the modern village along London Road, and was in the parish of Great Amwell. A separate village and parish called Little Amwell was centred on a village green a short distance to the north of Hertford Heath. During the twentieth century the urban areas of the two villages merged and the combined village became known generally as Hertford Heath. In 1956 builders laying concrete for the garages in Trinity Road, came acros ...
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East Hertfordshire District Council
East or Orient is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from west and is the direction from which the Sun rises on the Earth. Etymology As in other languages, the word is formed from the fact that east is the direction where the Sun rises: ''east'' comes from Middle English ''est'', from Old English ''ēast'', which itself comes from the Proto-Germanic *''aus-to-'' or *''austra-'' "east, toward the sunrise", from Proto-Indo-European *aus- "to shine," or "dawn", cognate with Old High German ''*ōstar'' "to the east", Latin ''aurora'' 'dawn', and Greek ''ēōs'' 'dawn, east'. Examples of the same formation in other languages include Latin oriens 'east, sunrise' from orior 'to rise, to originate', Greek ανατολή anatolé 'east' from ἀνατέλλω 'to rise' and Hebrew מִזְרָח mizraḥ 'east' from זָרַח zaraḥ 'to rise, to shine'. ''Ēostre'', a Germanic goddess of dawn, might have been a personification ...
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Forestry Commission
The Forestry Commission is a non-ministerial government department responsible for the management of publicly owned forests and the regulation of both public and private forestry in England. The Forestry Commission was previously also responsible for Forestry in Wales and Scotland. However, on 1 April 2013, Forestry Commission Wales merged with other agencies to become Natural Resources Wales, whilst two new bodies (Forestry and Land Scotland and Scottish Forestry) were established in Scotland on 1 April 2019. The Forestry Commission was established in 1919 to expand Britain's forests and woodland, which had been severely depleted during the First World War. The Commission bought large amounts of agricultural land on behalf of the state, eventually becoming the largest manager of land in Britain. Today, the Forestry Commission is divided into three divisions: Forestry England, Forestry Commission and Forest Research. Over time the purpose of the Commission broadened to includ ...
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Great Spotted Woodpecker
The great spotted woodpecker (''Dendrocopos major'') is a medium-sized woodpecker with pied black and white plumage and a red patch on the lower belly. Males and young birds also have red markings on the neck or head. This species is found across the Palearctic including parts of North Africa. Across most of its range it is resident, but in the north some will migrate if the conifer cone crop fails. Some individuals have a tendency to wander, leading to the recent recolonisation of Ireland and to vagrancy to North America. Great spotted woodpeckers chisel into trees to find food or excavate nest holes, and also drum for contact and territorial advertisement; like other woodpeckers, they have anatomical adaptations to manage the physical stresses from the hammering action. This species is similar to the Syrian woodpecker. This woodpecker occurs in all types of woodlands and eats a variety of foods, being capable of extracting seeds from pine cones, insect larvae from inside tre ...
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Limenitis Camilla
''Limenitis camilla'', the (Eurasian) white admiral, is a butterfly of the family Nymphalidae. It is found in woodland throughout southern Britain and much of Europe and the Palearctic, extending as far east as Japan. Adult white admirals have dark wings with white bands. The contrasting colours help to break up the outline of the wing, camouflaging it from predators. They have a wingspan of approximately 60–65 mm and have a distinctive, elegant flight consisting of short periods of wing beats, followed by long glides. The white admiral feeds on bramble blossom and honeydew and the female will lay its eggs singly on wisps of honeysuckle growing in dense woodland. The caterpillars are green with red-brown hairs and are camouflaged on a leaf by a mixture of their own droppings and silk. As autumn approaches it will form a tent-like structure made of leaf tissue known as a hibernaculum which it then secures to the stem with silk before hibernating. The caterpillar will th ...
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Early Purple Orchid
''Orchis mascula'', the early-purple orchid, early spring orchis, is a species of flowering plant in the orchid family, Orchidaceae. Description ''Orchis mascula'' is a perennial herbaceous plant with stems up to high, green at the base and purple on the apex. The root system consists of two tubers, rounded or ellipsoid. The leaves, grouped at the base of the stem, are oblong-lanceolate, pale green, sometimes with brownish-purple speckles. The inflorescence is long and it is composed of 6 to 20 flowers gathered in dense cylindrical spikes. The flower size is about and the color varies from pinkish-purple to purple. The lateral sepals are ovate-lanceolate and erect, the median one, together with the petals, is smaller and cover the gynostegium. The labellum is three-lobed and convex, with crenulated margins and the basal part clearer and dotted with purple-brown spots. The spur is cylindrical or clavate, horizontal or ascending. The gynostegium is short, with reddish-green ...
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Hertford Heath Nature Reserve
Hertford Heath nature reserve is a 28 hectare biological Site of Special Scientific Interest in Hertford Heath in Hertfordshire. It is managed by the Herts and Middlesex Wildlife Trust and the local planning authority is East Hertfordshire District Council. Heathland is a threatened habitat in southern England, and this site is a good example of lowland heath on pebble gravels, with open areas which have freely draining acidic soils. The heath is dominated by heather, and there are grass snakes and slow worms. Sphagnum mosses and creeping willow are found in wetter areas. Secondary woodland on acid London clay is mainly oak and hornbeam, with an understorey of holly. Ponds support the rare water violet and a rich invertebrate fauna such as great crested and smooth newts, the water spider and eight species of dragonfly. Birds include the great-spotted woodpecker and nuthatch. The reserve is in two parts on either side of London Road. The southern part is accessed from The Roundi ...
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Herts And Middlesex Wildlife Trust Reserves
Hertfordshire ( or ; often abbreviated Herts) is one of the home counties in southern England. It borders Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire to the north, Essex to the east, Greater London to the south, and Buckinghamshire to the west. For government statistical purposes, it forms part of the East of England region. Hertfordshire covers . It derives its name – via the name of the county town of Hertford – from a hart (stag) and a ford, as represented on the county's coat of arms and on the flag. Hertfordshire County Council is based in Hertford, once the main market town and the current county town. The largest settlement is Watford. Since 1903 Letchworth has served as the prototype garden city; Stevenage became the first town to expand under post-war Britain's New Towns Act of 1946. In 2013 Hertfordshire had a population of about 1,140,700, with Hemel Hempstead, Stevenage, Watford and St Albans (the county's only ''city'') each having between 50,000 and 100,000 resi ...
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Nature Reserves In Hertfordshire
Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physics, physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomenon, phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. Although humans are part of nature, human activity is often understood as a separate category from other natural phenomena. The word ''nature'' is borrowed from the Old French ''nature'' and is derived from the Latin word ''natura'', or "essential qualities, innate disposition", and in ancient times, literally meant "birth". In ancient philosophy, ''natura'' is mostly used as the Latin translation of the Greek word ''physis'' (φύσις), which originally related to the intrinsic characteristics of plants, animals, and other features of the world to develop of their own accord. The concept of nature as a whole, the physical universe, is one of several expansions of the original notion; it began with certain core applications of the word ...
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