Autumn is one of my favourite times of year and I thought it was a good time for an adventure; so I set off with family and friends to Andrew’s Wood where we could take in the autumnal sights and I could set the kids off hunting for natural treasures.

I challenged the kids to find a number of different coloured leaves as we meandered down the path and across the meadows towards the woods. Amazingly we had only gone a few metres by the time they were showing me their bountiful leaves of different shades including ones with a multitude of colours within a single leaf.

One of the leaves had some galls on the back and I set about explaining what they were. These were Spangle Galls which are created when the tiny Common Spangle Gall Wasp (which most people will probably never see), lays its eggs on the underside of the oak leaf. As with many other galls these eggs trigger a reaction by the host plant (in this case the oak tree) to form a protective growth around the egg. One of the most commonly known galls is the Marble Gall, which some (including myself until a few years ago) mistakenly call the Oak Apple, which is another gall altogether. Nearby there was a young oak tree and its branches were laden with Marble Galls, one of which had a small hole in it; this is a sign that the young wasp had matured and drilled a hole in the gall so that it could escape and fly away.

Reaching one of the clearings before entering the woods I noticed a number of colourful flowers still blooming mostly in shades of purple, with Scabious, Selfheal and Bettany amongst them. We also paused here to see if we could find any spiders webs, but on this occasion we were unsuccessful.

My nephew Jonathan had brought with him a gift I gave him for his birthday in the form of a pair of Bugnoculars (a large bug pot, with 2 magnified viewing lenses to peer at any creatures within) and a sweep net. I wasn’t sure how much we would catch in the meadow at this time of year, but not wanting to disappoint I did my best to make the few tiny flies that we caught seem exciting and we took it in turns to look at them closely. We did however catch a lot of wild flower seeds and after studying all their different shapes, we scattered them so that they could have a chance to grow next year.

I then set them the challenge of finding a muddy puddle and the children took no time to find where the path momentarily followed the course of a stream. We stomped through, glad that we had brought our wellies. The stream led us to a little pond beside the path and we watched as pond skaters scooted off and hid under vegetation.

Next on the scavenger hunt was finding an acorn in a cup. A task which would not be too difficult thanks to it being a Mast Year (a year when trees and shrubs produce exceptionally large crops of seeds or fruit). Whilst looking for acorns my sister in law Anna discovered a wonderful fairy ring of mushrooms which I later identified as a type of Deceiver Fungi. The fruits that we see above the surface in the form of toadstools are a tiny part of the fungal

organism which is mostly below the ground formed out of a network of root like threads. When I find fungi I like to imagine how far this thread network (known as mycelium) stretches.

After stopping for a chocolate biscuit break on a convenient bench, we continued around the woodland trail with the kids favourite activity now being following the boardwalks and bridges through the trees. Along the way we spotted some red berries on the Holly bushes, some bracket fungus growing on a rotten tree stump and a number of fluffy grey feathers floating through the air.

In places the path cuts through some old banks, and whilst crossing one of these Jonathan had another opportunity to use his bugnoculars when he discovered a Flat-Backed Millipede, a creature that somewhat resembles a Centipede. Then whilst picking up her 17 month old from the ground, my friend Jaz spotted a baby Toad. We all had a closer look at it, noticing the rough warty skin that makes it a toad rather than a frog. We then returned it to the damp undergrowth.

Nearing the end of our walk, the last thing I asked the kids to find was a pumpkin. They of course all delighted in telling me that they don’t grow in places like this and certainly not in trees, towards which I was pointing. But it seemed that a “Halloween Fairy” had hidden some here when they weren’t looking. And sure enough there were some little diddy pumpkins sitting on the moss covered branches of a nearby tree.

It is amazing what you can find whilst out and about at this time of year, if you just take notice (pumpkins excluded).