Phil Brown & Yvette Marsh
SOG introduces Knettishall to L&G
possible Tree Pipit had been spotted), the SOG team decided it would be best to convert the bird walk into more of an introduction to the Breckland habitats.
Accordingly, at the outset of each walk, the L&G employees were given a short lecture (see photo) about the site’s three habitats – Brecks Fact File heathland, grassland A unique and distinctive habitat of over a 1000 and riverine meadows. square kilometres, stretching from just north of In fact Knettishall is an Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk to Castle Acre in unusual Brecks site as Norfolk, five-miles north of Swaffham. it displays all three habitats alongside Breck is a word derived from a medieval term each other. Then on meaning a tract of heathland broken up for the route march periodic cultivation. Because the soil was poor, around the site each when farmed it was quickly exhausted and type of habitat was allowed to revert to scrub, giving the landscape visited and its key a ‘broken’, fractured appearance. features revealed.
On October 19th twelve employees of Legal & General (L&G) visited Knettishall Heath to help Site Manager Samantha Gay with the clearance of scrub on the heath. SOG had also been invited to attend in order to provide the L&G staff with a bit of light relief from their backbreaking task. The role of the two SOG Council members was to escort groups of L&G employees on a three to four-mile bird walk around this new Suffolk Wildlife Trust site.
From the outset the weather was indifferent (later it deteriorated to a steady downpour) so, as a bird recce had already established that there was little bird life around (although a
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THE HARRIER – December 2012
For instance the SOG team explained that the heathland, which the L&G team were helping to clear, was not a natural habitat, but a manmade one that their work was helping to maintain. The staff members then encountered a small herd of Exmoor ponies whose grazing was also helping to maintain the heath. In the morning a number of Meadow Pipits were