If you have followed my monthly notes about the reserve regularly, you will realise that our team heartily dislike the "Three Bs" - birch, bramble and bracken. Of them all we dislike bracken the most because it's pretty useless for anything much. I suppose you could use it for temporary thatching, for bedding down animals, or composting.

But bracken can be very nasty if you grab a stalk because it is razor sharp and can cut you badly. But worse is that it is carcinogenic - it can cause cancer. It can be a problem for forestry workers or shepherds who might be exposed to inhaling bracken spores in large quantities, although our Sussex Wildlife Trust guide for all of us dealing with bracken is to avoid working in it in late July or August.

I must emphasis that the risk to casual visitors is extremely small. "Much less than, for example, the dangers of benzene inhalation while filling up a can with fuel", says the Trust. So please don't let this deter you from visiting the reserve.

I hope you didn't visit it on a Thursday in recent weeks, because the rain seems to have tipped down on our work days, just as we had been pushing ourselves to finish the bracken weeding before the spores appeared. Such is life, yet as we entered the first week in August, the heather came into flower. Its honeyed perfume and mauve flowered delights assailed both the nose and the eye for a brief ten days or so. Did you enjoy it?

Finally, an advertisement... Sussex Wildlife Trust's Conservation Careline, launched in June 2000 has generated a good response. Increasing interest in wildlife in recent years has prompted the trust to set up a dedicated phone line to cope with the many phone calls about a variety of conservation and wildlife issues. The sort of questions have covered range from "How can I help this baby bird?" from "Is this field likely to be developed?". The phone number at head office in Henfield is: 01273 494777

John Hall © 2000