Piglittle Meadow

Piglittle Meadow is  the green-space between Amen Corner North and the A329M.  Farm fields were converted into a park when the new houses were built.  The green-space is mostly open grassland but there is a piece of mature woodland (formerly a bluebell wood), a reed-bed, areas of tree-planting and mature hedgerows on two sides.
Piglittle Meadow is well used by dog walkers, but there are a couple of muddy areas that make it challenging to walk round in winter.  Before it was turned into a park, the fields were grazed by horses and deer.  The removal of this grazing pressure has made the area attractive to ground-nesting species like skylarks and meadow pipits.  Unfortunately, disturbance from dogs and walkers makes it difficult for these species to nest successfully.
At the time of writing, the green-space is still being managed by the developer.  Bracknell Forest Council will take it over once a drainage problem has been resolved.  One of the first things that we hope they will do is remove some of the scrub from the wood so that the bluebells, and other woodland plants, can recover.
This year, we discovered  wild service trees along the A329M boundary including some decent sized trees near the path to the A329M roundabout.  These rare native trees are often a sign of mature woodland, but some of these were probably planted when the A329M was built.
We counted 51 species of birds (compared with 51 in 2024) and 17 species of butterflies (compared with 15 in 2024).  Notable sightings included a dartford warbler joining the stonechats, meadow pipits and skylarks, swifts hunting over the wood, and clouded yellow and small copper butterflies.
Some of the bird and butterfly species that we are seeing at Piglittle are heathland specialists and the British Trust for Ornithology believe that part of the site used to be heathland.