Chris suggested a trip to the forest today, we normally go to Rendlesham but today he decided that we ought to go further afield to Thetford. I’ve never been before so was quite excited to go somewhere new with wildlife because Joe loves birds, beetles, butterflies, lizards…

So we packed a picnic and went off in search of trees!  An hour later we arrived at ‘Mayday’, had our picnic and then set off on our trail.  We walked the Goshawk Trail where you can find many types of birds, four types of deer, a variety of insects and lizards.  We saw many large dragonflies which I tried to get on camera but they were too fast for me to keep up with them!  Lots of birds to be heard, including what Chris thought was a woodpecker but sadly we didn’t manage to get a glimpse of them – things like that happen when you have a 2 year old and a German shepherd with you!

Here is a beetle that we came across, Joe was very intrigued by him and it made a lucky escape from the giant paws of my doddery dog.  We managed to spot a lizard too, I took a picture but as you can see its a bit blurry – we tried to get a better shot but he got bored of posing and dashed off into the logs.

On the way we bumped into a bird hide, where you used to be able to sit and watch for the birds in the area.  It is now out of bounds due to vandalism.

We didn’t spot any of the ponds in the area nor any snakes but it was quite overgrown so there were many hidden places.  On the way back, we passed lots of blackberry bushes – Joe was in heaven.  The boy just loves blackberries, he can stuff half a punnet in under 2 minutes, its beyond me how he doesn’t make himself sick.

We also passed a pile of rotting apples which had been dumped on the side of the forest path which the butterflies were tucking into with gusto.  Next time we are heading off to another section of the forest and I cant wait.