Our "green team" is back working on the heather. It's an arduous, boring job, stumbling through the waist-high crop and tripping over the large stems, often in the heat. But we seem to get by through good humour and sheer determination.

We have to pull or cut the bracken in the heather otherwise it will take over - followed very quickly by scrub. Why bother, I hear you say? It's a bit of a long story, but briefly, many years ago it was once grazed by a variety of animals which ate the young heather and in doing so trod on the brittle bracken shoots, thus keeping it under control. Now we are the animals, and we work to make our small heathland of just over one hectare (2.4 acres) maintain the diversity of the wildlife in the reserve.

A case in point... There are one or two old tree stumps in the heather, and recently I was working to cut out a smallish birch. I then put my hatchet down on a stump. Returning for it at little later I was delighted to find a lizard sunning itself on the wood. It was just a "common" lizard, but even a common anything gives me something of a thrill!

So you see, if we did not maintain the heather habitat the lizards would almost be non-existent, and Heather - a member of the green team - had never seen one before. So there you go, as the saying is. We have seen lizards several times over the years working in the heather. They are most likely to live in sand dunes, grassland, bogs, as well as moorland, throughout most of Europe. They are pleasing little creatures and if you approach them slowly one can enjoy watching them blinking sleepily in the sunshine. But one sudden move and they disappear fast.

John Hall © 2000