Can
you hear
it ?
This is number 7 in the further treasures of Hadleigh Country
Park.
Hadleigh Country Park gets its
name from Hadleigh Castle.
It lies between South
Benfleet, to the West, and Leigh, to the East. The park consists of
a mix of scrub, woodland and grassland hillside running down to
grazing marsh and seawall, which is adjacent to a narrow strip of
salt marsh. This wide range of habitat provides many places for
plants and animals to live. In summer this is one of the best
places in Essex
to see butterflies, dragonflies
and damselflies.
The rangers tell me that the best place to park is
in the main car-park (N 51º 33·1310' E 00º 35·7245'), however, this is £2 for the day. The
car-park closes at various times throughout the year, check before leaving
your car. Try the web-site
www.hadleighcountrypark.co.uk
Bombus sylvarum or the Shrill carder bee is a national Biodiversity Action
plan species (BAP), with nationally important populations in
south Essex, including
this country park.
The Shrill carder bee is a social bumblebee (lives
in small colonies, <100), generally on the ground in small hollows
or slightly underground. These nests tend to be found in dense
grassland and they often use old vole runs. The bee has
the following characteristics;
the thorax (chest) is pale greenish yellow with a central band of
black hairs, the abdominal (main body) segments have pale fringes
at the rear and the tail is orange - pinkish/ red. The colouration
is the same for the males, workers and queens. The queens are 18 -
20mm in length, males are 15 - 18 mm in
length and workers smaller.
The bumblebees are deft fliers and tend to fly
amongst open tall flower-rich grassland at a lower level where forage flowers
occur,
particularly those
containing plants with long flower tubes such as
vetches, red clover, dead-nettles, bird's-foot trefoils, black
horehound
and red bartsia. A wide variety of
plant species, flowering at different times, is needed to provide
the bee with food supplies from April until
September.
One way of detecting the shrill carder
is by the sound they make- a high pitched buzz or a shrill.
(that is if you are still young and your
ears haven’t been abused by loud rock
music)
The above co-ordinates are for car-parking only.
To get the co-ordinates for this cache you need to solve the
puzzle. For some this will be very easy for others it will look
impossible to solve.
The cache is at
N51º OR ·(Y+R) (O+Y)
(O+R)'
E00º O(Y+Br) ·Br (O+G)
(Br+R) '
Please note that these are all letters and not numbers.
The cache is easy to find once you have solved the puzzle.
Thanks to Jackplug for the idea.
You are looking for a
small camouflaged container, with room only for log and
pencil.