Wednesday's meeting, at the Rugby Club, was a talk by Ursula Clare Franklin on her ‘Quantock Project’. Ursula had been to talk to us before, on her ‘Mission Penguin’, so we knew what an accomplished and interesting speaker she is.
This time she came to speak to us on a project she took up during the 2020 COVID lockdown era. As she lives in the middle of the Quantocks and loves spending her time out on the hills taking pictures of the wildlife she decided to do a sort of Spring/Summer/Autumn/Winter Watch following the wildlife of the Quantocks as it went about its business oblivious to the current concerns of the human population.
The Quantocks Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (or National Landscape as these areas are now known) is 36 sq miles of heathland, oak woodlands, and combes with a SSSI running along the coast between Blue Anchor and Lilstock and supports a diverse range of flora and fauna.
Ursula’s pictures of this varied natural community were amazing and quite obviously had taken an enormous amount of patience to gather. Wildlife is not always cooperative when it comes to posing for photographs and Ursula must have waited for a long time for some of the images she showed us. There were flowers and fungi, birds and butterflies and some enchanting shots of fox cubs. She told us how she had watched young birds fledge and even helped on occasion when fate had taken a cruel hand with the baby birds. She also showed us pictures of Autumn leaves displaying their myriad colours, some glittering with ice crystals. It was a very interesting talk and everyone seemed to enjoy it. Judging by the reaction of the audience this may not be Ursula’s last visit to our club.