A trip out of county to the Chilterns.

 Earlier this month we travelled up to Buckinghamshire and stayed in the Chilterns, a beautiful chalk downland area with splendid trees and red kites galore.

This red kite was sitting beside a chapel at NT Greys Court and spent the day just circling and landing and watching all the visitors in the hope of picking up a snack to eat. They have a very distinctive call, and when you first here them they are like someone whistling their dog!

I was lucky enough to be pointed in the direction of a very rare flowering plant, the Chiltern gentian which is mostly only found in Buckinghamshire ( where it is the County flower), Hertfordshire and interestingly, recently discovered in Wiltshire. A plant of chalk downland it is very pretty but quite small and very easy to overlook.

Being early autumn now there were quite a few fungi to be seen and this Shaggy Parasol was one prominent one. Whilst they generally like woodland, this one was in the middle of a field!

Whilst not exactly wildlife, we had an interesting visit to the Chiltern Open Air Museum where a number of buildings have been saved from destruction. They have been painstakingly taken down and bought to this site and rebuilt and it is a fascinating place to view old dwellings, functional buildings like toll houses etc.