Mobbed by sheep!

I've just noticed how often my posts feature the wildlife I come across when I'm out. Today started off quite sunny so I seized the moment and took a short walk, it turned out to be just 2 miles, around the edge of Alsager through an area called Oakhanger Moss. Quite a few local areas are called 'Moss' but some are now housing estates; I wanted to see what they look like nowadays when not built on.

It turned out to be a slightly odd kind of woodland, with a feel of complete abandonment, and lots of ferns and bracken growing where the sunlight filtered through.

I am not a fan of signs like this one, which feels rather stroppy in tone:

It made me reflect that, as a child growing up on a farm, there were no rules at all that I can remember. Unthinkable now. A recent walk through the grounds of Davenport Hall near Swettenham was absolutely plastered with signs about horses not walking on the grass verge, no ball games and so on.

However the highlight of this mini walk were these chaps, who came pelting across the field as I walked through. They came very close and left me with a big grin:

I assume they thought I might have food, as they soon headed off once I turned out to be food-free. And who says sheep are stupid? When I retraced my steps, they clearly remembered my rubbish food record and didn't so much as stir in my direction.

It turns out that Oakhanger Moss is an SSSI - right on my doorstep, and I had no idea. According to English Nature, 'the meres and mosses of the north-west Midlands form a geographically discrete series of nationally important lowland open water and peatland sites. The finest examples are considered to be of international importance. They have developed in natural depressions in the glacial drift (sands and boulder clays) left by the ice sheets as they retreated from the Cheshire-Shropshire Plain some 15,000 years ago. The majority lie in Cheshire and north Shropshire.'

So I'm fascinated to learn that Oakhanger Moss, which was a mere (small lake) until at least the 1600s, is a good example of the way that meres get turned into mosses (a range of damp habitats) - see English Nature's explanation for more details.

Brought up in Yorkshire, a county that's famous for its countryside, I've always felt that Cheshire was a sort of Conference League county in comparison, but I begin to see that's not quite the case. I wonder why Cheshire doesn't make more of  it?