Jackson's Coppice and Marsh Nature Reserve

We have been members of the Staffordshire Wildlife Trust for nearly four years now and although we'd visited their headquarters at The Wolseley Centre near Stafford and their Visitor Centre at Westport Lake here in the city quite a few times, we hadn't visited many of their other reserves, other than Parrot's Drumble which I wrote about - here, until earlier this year when we visited Loynton Moss which I wrote a post about a couple of months ago -  here.

 

Just over a week ago we explored another of their nature reserves which was quite close to the walled garden at Sugnall which I wrote about a couple of posts ago.   Jackson's Coppice and Marsh nature reserve is close to the village of Walk Mill, there is a small car park (it will probably take only three well parked cars) just up a lane before the Mill house and pond.  The entrance is through a wildflower meadow and there are two walks - round the marshland and in the woodland.

You pass some of the marshy areas as you cross the road to go into the coppice.  It was so peaceful up amongst the trees, birds singing and bees buzzing and the forest floor full of flowers like

Wood Anemone - a carpet of white stars under the trees

The small dainty heads of the shy Wood Sorrel

Lesser Celandine in great profusion in places

and the first signs of the bright blue of the native Bluebells given another week the flowers should be out all over the coppice

The air was warm and the sky quite blue in places

We traced our steps back to the meadow and down to the boardwalk around the marshland

 There were loads of sedge tussocks in Jackson's marsh

 A little inquisitive friend came to say hello as we sat awhile on a seat that will be a super place to watch for dragonflies in the summer.

 The alder wetland wasn't all that wet at this time of year

Most of the wetland was full of clumps of bright yellow Marsh Marigold.