Pear tree and Beyond: Orchid Field trip

When it comes to wildlife watching, I'm a bit of a loner, like to fully immerse myself in the moment and escape the concrete jungle and all that goes with it, this works well with Birds, Butterflies, Bees and Dragonflies.

Orchids are whole different matter, people are very secretive about their locations with good reason I suppose. Its quite easy to find some of the more common species like Common Spotted Orchid, Pyramidal, even a Bee Orchid usally turns up eventually. The other scarcer native Orchids are a different matter unless you know where to look.

I decided to join a group of Orchid enthusiasts in the hope that I could learn more and hopefully see some of the scarcer Orchids I know nothing about, I find myself becoming slightly obsessed with finding these now, with this in mind I joined a small group visiting Sandwich Bay with a very knowledgeable leader, main objective was to see the Lizard Orchids, and it's no secret that they thrive here near the golf courses.

We parked up at the Sandwich Bay Bird Observatory, and made our way across the dunes towards the golf course that runs alongside the beach here. Our leader very nonchalantly pointed out some Orchids growing in the long grass, Southern Marsh Orchids in perfect condition, a nice sighting to start the day.

Southern Marsh Orchid

Closer to the beach we started running into the huge numbers of Lizard Orchids, a new sighting for me, not hard to find, they are quite large and distinctive in shape, the individual flowers are suppose to represent the rear half of a lizard, disappearing into a hole, they are also said to have the scent of a goat, they do.

Lizard Orchid

Pyramidal Orchids were popping up everywhere along the grassy verges of the road, giving a lovely splash of colour .

Pyramidal Orchid with a Small Skipper

Before we started to head back, a couple of Bee Orchids were pointed out, a good start to the morning with four Orchids seen and the promise of more to be seen at a few other sites.

Bee Orchid

The group were heading over to Park Gate Down another good Orchid site, quite well known so I'm not giving anything away.

Once again our leader threw into the conversation asking if anyone would like to see the Birds Nest Orchid, which we could stop off and see on the way to Park Gate Down. This was one of those Orchids I would never find in a lifetimes search. I was quite excited to see this one, can't give the location but it was inside a very dark Beech wood with hardly any sunlight filtering through the canopy.

Gets it s name from its root system resembling a birds nest, no chlorophyll in this Orchid at all, gets its nourishment from dead and decaying humus usally under Beech trees.

A very insignificant Orchid in some respects, no more than four or five inches tall, quite hard to spot against the leaf litter under the trees, an Orchid which I doubt I would have spotted without help.

On to Parkgate Down, I had visited here several weeks ago to see the Monkey Orchids most of which were now fading away, we did find this one Monkey Orchid still looking good with a few visible monkeys still..

Monkey Orchid.

As we headed through the grassy banks of the reserve heading for another particularly scarce Orchid that had been found on this site, we passed many Common Spotted Orchids, Pyramidal and Common Fragrant Orchids of many different shades.

Common Spotted Orchid

Common Chalk Fragrant Orchid

The Musk Orchid another extremely difficult Orchid to see, just a shade or to lighter than the grass it was growing in, three very small Musk Orchids, how they were found I do not know.