Hello Folks,RSPB reserves are great places for you to get closer to nature. So what better reason than to have a quiz to see how much you know about them. Each Monday for 12 weeks, I will be posting a little teaser for you. Without looking in books or on the internet (i.e - no cheating), see if you can identify this RSPB reserve. On Wednesday, so as long as no-one has guessed it, I will post one clue. On Friday I will post the answer along with some additional information for your interest. Just for fun!: Make sure you keep an note of the first letter of each reserve as the weeks go by, and at the end of week 12, see if you can rearrange all 12 letters to spell out a message about our reserves.Here goes ....MYSTERY RSPB RESERVE#2Once thought to be gun emplacements to repel Napoleon, patches of pebbled ground at this site may have had a more macabre Bronze age purpose.
Monty, Colin Montgomerie or Field Marshal or someone else
http://www.flickr.com/photos/16304936@N06/
http://suffolk.activeboard.com/f528553/birds-of-suffolk/
Might as well be Monty Python. I have no idea. Napoleonic defences spread right down to Plymouth, so it could be one of a few hundred reserves
This week’s mystery reserve is..... Aylesbeare Common in Devon. Opened in 1976, the heathland at Aylesbeare Common is home to Dartford warblers, Stonechats and Tree pipit as well as the rather photogenic Kugelann’s ground beetle. If you are lucky you may also catch a glimpse of a Montagu’s harrier (Monty). Did you know that it was because of a breeding pair of Montagu’s harriers, that Aylesbeare was first set up.
The small areas of pebble ‘pavement’, which occasionally get dug up under the heather at Aylesbeare were always thought to have been built by soldiers training in the early nineteenth century, ready to repel Napoleon, as part of their camps or gun emplacements. However, archaeologists are now getting Bronze Age dates from bits of carbon caught between the stones! So their current theory is that these were de-fleshing platforms, where Bronze Age people left dead bodies to decay, before stashing the clean bones in the nearby tumuli that dot the hill tops.
More information on Aylesbeare Common can be found here:
www.rspb.org.uk/.../about.aspx
Keep an eye out for next week’s mystery reserve quiz.
Claire
P.S - Don’t forget to jot down the first letter of each reserve.