If you are a nature’s lover, loves watching birds, animals; the best place you can visit is Stover Country Park.
Situated in Newton Abbot’s countryside and spread over 114 acres the Stover Country Park nestles woodland, healthland, grassland, marsh, lake, and a substantial variety of wildlife. Interpretation boards, a bird hide, aerial walkway, and many more are the additional attractions of the park. Strolling through aerial walkway is just amazing where you can gain bird’s eye view of the woodland and ponds below.
Lake
Stover Country Park is recognized for its lake. This 230 years old lake is a great place where you can watch a wide range of bird species like kingfisher, pochard, mute swan, mallard, cormorant, gull spp, moorhen, coot, and many more. It is wonderful to watch grass snake swimming in the lake or slithering through the marsh.
Marsh
Valuable marsh areas in the Stover Country Park are considered the most important habitat where you can watch rare flies with common reedmace and hemlock-water dropwort. Water rails, water shrew, mink, harvest mice, etc. are worth watching here.
Woodland
Extensive deciduous and coniferous woodland within the Stover Country Park is world famous for oak and birch with some scots pine. It’s a home for wide range of visiting and resident wildlife. You can enjoy watching greenfinch, and several other birds in winter season while tit spices, woodpecker, tawny owl, spotted flycatchers, etc. are worth watching in summer. Roe deer, grey squirrels and dormice can also be traced in the woodland. Most importantly, one can find a diverse array of fungi mainly during the autumn.
Healthland
Healthland in the Stover Country Park is especially important for the hoverfly spices, bees, wasps, ants, and spiders. Roe deer and fox are also present here along with adders and nightjar.
Mammals, reptiles and amphibians
The park is also famous for mammals, reptiles and amphibians. Healthland in the park is one of the best place where you can find several species of reptiles. It is a house for mammals where one can notice footprints of deer, badger, fox and other. One can also notice bats, otter and harvest mice in the park. It is worth watching variety of birds in the park. As the season changes different birds visit the Stover Country Park and go. It is worth watching wintering wildfowl, nightjars, black-headed gulls, ducks, warding birds, coot, moorhen, mute swan, blue tit, great tit, blackbird, robin, song thrush, spotted woodpecker, and many more species of birds.
Which is the best time to visit the park?
Spring and summer is the best season to visit Stover Country Park when the park is with full of flowers. It is worth to enjoy long spread colorful flowers. The grassland in and around the Stover Country park offers eye-soothing views of flowering plants like common spotted orchid, broad leaved helleborine, meadowsweet, vetch spices, ragged robin, hemp agrimony, etc. Marsh marigold, skullcap, reedmace, and many more flowers in the marsh, or water lilies in the lakes; the whole park becomes colorful with full of an array of flowers.