A Wintry Walk Through Wareham Forest’s Wild Landscape
About Morden Bog NNR
At a reported 23.69 ha (58.54 acres), Morden Bog contains open heathland and the largest valley bog in Dorset, which forms the majority of this National Nature Reserve. Located within Wareham Forest, most of the area is designated as a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) and a Special Area of Conservation (SAC), and is a particularly significant location for many rare plant species.
Some of the oldest heather in Dorset
Morden Bog has some of the oldest heather in Dorset, which grows on the dry northern slopes. Elsewhere, you can find marsh gentian, Dorset heath, bog orchid, purple moor grass, shrub bog myrtle, and white cotton grass, mixed in with yellow clumps of bog asphodel. Rare marsh clubmoss and brown beak sedge also grow here, plus carnivorous plants such as the common sundew and bladderwort.
Morden Bog has a variety of rare wildlife, including the Dartford Warbler, woodlark, stonechat, and nightjar, and reptiles such as the smooth snake and sand lizard, and many insects, including dragonflies.
A wintry scene at Morden Bog NNR.
My winter walk at Morden Bog
Today was a frosty but sunny day, so I didn’t see any of the above-mentioned rare plants, save for ling heather, which, of course, isn’t flowering yet.
I had a chilly but enjoyable walk, only spotting a handful of people in the distance – just how I like it. With all the frost and ice, the landscape was quite a magical scene, as you can see from my photos. Such a pity that Morden Bog didn’t look like this at Christmas!
Frost and ice covers a small pond at Morden Bog.
Old Bird Hides at Morden Bog NNR
In 2019, I’d photographed the old bird hides that are dotted around Old Decoy Pond, so I returned to see how they’d fared over the last seven years. Unsurprisingly, not at all well!
» Morden Bog bird hide photos from 2019.
Today, I took some photos of the hides I could still see (most were inaccessible even in 2019), but the majority have now either collapsed completely or pretty much fallen into the mire surrounding the pond. Give the hides a few more years and there will be no trace that they ever existed.
In 2026, bird hide number 6 is collapsing into the mire.
In 2026, this is all that remains of bird hide number 7.
