Warnham Local Nature Reserve excursion
Saturday 1st August 2026
NOT FINISHED
This was the fifteenth Quekett excursion to Warnham Local Nature Reserve on the outskirts of Horsham, West Sussex, hosted by the Friends of Warnham Local Nature Reserve, and organised by Graham Matthews. As in recent years, we set up our microscopes, cameras and computers in a small room at the side of the Discovery Hub.
After several weeks with almost no rain, the dipping ponds have dried out, and the Reserve’s pond-dipping sessions have had to be cancelled.
Dipping pond
The water level in the Shelley pond has dropped alarmingly:
Shelley pond
The reed bed near the Discovery Centre is now very dense, with little room for collecting. The water level is still normal, and the marsh frogs are still finding enough to eat.
Marsh frog
The millpond is also still at its normal level:
Millpond
The banks of the millpond are not accessible to the public, but we were allowed access to a bridge from which we could throw a bucket into the water.
Bridge over the millpond outflow
Buckets of samples from the millpond
Quekett members in the Discovery Hub
Graham Matthews brought his familiar Leitz Dialux with 4×, 10×, 16×, 25× and 40× objectives, a circular stage and DIC. Lighting came via a dual fibre-optic cable with both LED and electronic flash. He used his Canon EOS 500D digital SLR controlled by DSLR Remote Pro on his Dell laptop computer, and also showed images on a Dell monitor.
Graham Matthews
Neil Henry brought his monocular PZO compound microscope with 4×, 10×, 20× and 40× objectives. The eyepiece was replaced by a YW5.0M eyepiece camera sending images to ToupView on an HP laptop.
Neil Henry
Grenham Ireland brought an unbranded trinocular stereo microscope with built-in incident and transmitted lighting, with a 38MP FHD Camera V8 (with an AmScope FMA050 reducing lens) sending images via a two-way switch to a Dell monitor. He also brought a trinocular Zeiss Standard with 2.5×, 6.3×, 16× and 40× objectives, with a Chinese inspection camera (with a 0.5× reducing lens) that was also attached to the two-way switch.
Grenham Ireland
Jacky McPherson brought her Charles Perry stereo microscope and had arranged to borrow a trinocular Zeiss Standard from Graham. The Zeiss was fitted with a 1–5× zoom objective and normal 10×, 16×, 20× and 40× objectives. Jacky brought a ToupCam camera (with a Brunel AMA050 reducing lens) sending images to ToupView software on her Lenovo laptop.
Jacky McPherson
Sample from the millpond
Sample from the millpond
We had a poster outside, and the door was propped open, so several people came past us and our microscopes, and some of them stopped to see what we were doing and to ask questions.
Graham Matthews with visitors
Neil Henry and Graham Matthews with visitors (Clare and Michael Blencowe)
Acknowledgements
Our thanks to the Friends of Warnham Local Nature Reserve for allowing us to collect specimens and to use the Discovery Hub, and to Graham Matthews for organising the excursion.
Report and most photographs by Alan Wood, photomicrographs by Graham Matthews and .