On Wednesday 3rd July, a party from the Sidmouth Nature Explorers group met at Farway airfield to explore the wild flower meadows and hunt down wild orchids. Orchids are a particularly elusive plant, prone to hiding in long grass and not always easily spotted.

The group was lead by Ed Dolphin, our expert guide, who after fighting his way through the grass spotted several well hidden orchids. There were four types which were hybrids of each other as, by all accounts, orchids are prone to cross breeding.

There were many other wildflowers spread around the whole site, including some particularly nice purple vetch and lots of buttercups.

Other wildlife spotted included swallows, housemartins and some very vocal skylarks (who treated us to some nice aerial displays), and meadow brown and marbled white butterflies .

All in all a very enjoyable 2 hours spent and interesting facts learnt by all.

Malcolm Seymour & Kevin Walker, co-leaders