Overview
Wildlife Trust BCN: A Chilterns Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, Pegsdon Hills. Steep chalk hills offer some of the best views in the county. In spring, moschatel, or town-hallclock, named after the arrangement of its flowers, can be found in the woodland, while dingy and grizzled skipper butterflies flutter around in the grassland.
With summer, arrives the smell of fresh herbs such as wild thyme, marjoram and wild basil. The melodious song of the Skylark is heard around the reserve. After dark the eerie green luminescence of glow-worms emanates from the grassland and bats fly overhead. Hoo Bit, once a larch plantation, is now a flower-rich grazed meadow, surrounded by woodland. White helleborine flowers in large numbers beneath the dense shade of beech trees. In autumn, honeysuckle, black bryony and old-man‘s-beard drape over trees and shrubs offering seeds and berries to hungry birds and small mammals.
In winter, fallow deer skirt along the woodland edge, while flocks of birds feed on seeds in hedgerow and field. We coppice in the wood and fell trees to allow light to reach the woodland floor.
Access
Park in the dead-end section of the old road to Shillington off the Hitchin – Barton Road B655, Pegsdon. Cross over the B655 for information boards with maps.
Birds
Buzzard, Red Kite, Grey Partridge, Lapwing, Meadow Pipit, Skylark, Yellowhammer. On passage – Ring Ouzel, Wheatear, Redstart.
Fieldfare – Steve Blain
