Ground Report – Cley Hill, Near Warminster, Wiltshire 09/07/10

The wheat ripening fast in the hot and dry weather which creates in interesting effect in itself, with half of the formation in dry crop while the other half is still relatively green. The wheat here is also sown much more sparsely than in the average field, with many less stems per square foot than would normally be seen.

The ‘shaded’ areas of the design which make it appear 3D are the obvious main features to this crop circle at ground level. These are created using a ‘basket weave’ effect but with two key differences to the formations where we saw this last season. Firstly the ‘lines’ used to create the overlapping pattern are parallel to the edges of the cube shapes in the design, therefore they cross each other creating internal angles of 60º rather than 90º as seen previously (x rather than +).

There are also, significantly, tufts of standing crop in between each of these cross over points which create the effect seen from the air, reflecting less light than the laid sections of the crop to create the ‘shaded’ areas. I cannot recall ever seeing or hearing about this kind of thing before and it is so impressive to see how it has been done.

The condition of the crop within these areas is generally very good. There is some evidence of damage to stems but on the whole they appear untouched. In many places the layering created by stems crossing in different directions causes the crop to end up a few inches from the ground rather than being laid flat.

Looking closely some of these sections can look somewhat messy, but taking the time to follow one of the parallel lines leads to finding evidence of even more intricacy. An example (shown below) is only a few stems laid as part of the pattern. These stems have been laid from within one of the standing tufts of wheat.

Across the formation as a whole, the centres of the larger laid areas are relatively neat, although there does appear to be less quality (as we might expect) in the areas where the crop is riper.

There seems to be consistency throughout this whole crop circle when looking at the general appearance of the laid crop. For example, there is no difference (as we have seen in some recent formations) between the crop in the middle of laid sections and that at the edges.