Countryman Diary - N0vember 2009
One of the great pleasures in editing our unique magazine is sharing in the enthusiasm of nature-loving correspondents. Their energy and dedication shines through as I talk with them. This month’s been a particularly good one with encouraging news concerning plants, butterflies and birds.
A rare autumnal visitor
The Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust (WWT) tells me that at Slimbridge, Gloucestershire, there has been an autumn sighting of a winter marsh warbler for the first time in forty years. The WWT is particularly pleased because this year marks the centenary of the birth its founder Sir Peter Scott. He foresaw that conservation of wildlife depends on safeguarding habitats and, crucially, on involving and inspiring people. WWT works to save threatened species from extinction and to date has improved the conservation status of twenty species.
Rare orchid gets a boost
Up in the north-west, Natural England report that one of our rarest wild flowers, the lady’s-slipper orchid, has received a boost with the planting of some new shoots.
Gait Barrows National Nature Reserve (NNR) lies in the centre of the Arnside-Silverdale Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) in Lancashire. Working closely with a team of specialists at Kew Gardens, staff at the reserve now have an extensive understanding of how to restore the plant to the wild. Seeds from private collections are cross-pollinated with the surviving wild plants to produce genetic vigour and variability of seeds. Kew Gardens germinate the seeds and produce small plantlets which are carefully grown on until ready for introduction into the wild.
The process has started at a number of sites within the previous natural range of the lady’s-slipper orchid but the most positive signs of success are occurring in the wooded limestone hills around Morecambe Bay.
A small and elusive butterfly
Worcestershire Wildlife Trust reports that a nationally rare butterfly has now been found on six of their reserves.
Eggs of the brown hairstreak, a small and elusive butterfly, have recently been discovered on blackthorn at Feckenham Wylde Moor Reserve near Redditch. Brown hairstreak eggs have also been seen previously at nearby Grafton Wood, Stockwood Meadow, Trench Wood, Humpy Meadow and Foster’s Green Meadows National Nature Reserve.
Brown hairstreaks usually fly in the canopies of trees and are rarely seen by most people. The females are most frequently seen as they descend to hedgerows in late August and September looking for suitable egg-laying spots. They tend to congregate around one tree known as an assembly or master tree, often ash, to feed on aphid honeydew although they’re occasionally found lower down feeding on common fleabane and bramble.
The eggs were found by Paul Meers, volunteer reserve manager at the Feckenham reserve. Paul tells me:
“The eggs are between eighteen inches and three feet or so above the ground on three blackthorn bushes. As blackthorn is by far the favourite food-plant of brown hairstreak caterpillars, we’ve now protected the area.
“This is a really exciting find as we haven’t seen brown hairstreaks on the reserve for the last ten years.”
The Worcestershire trust also report that a rare moth has been seen at Monkwood nature reserve, six miles (10 km) from Worcester. The drab looper, a small buff-coloured moth, has a restricted distribution centred around central southern England and the southern border of England and Wales. Its stronghold is the Wyre Forest and this is the first time in a number of years that increased numbers have been spotted in this isolated colony in Monkwood.
Window dressing
Burton in Lonsdale’s flourishing community-owned shop is well supported by the locals, so, when faced by a problem of what to do with a blanked-off window that dominated the frontage, it turned to the community for ideas.
Local artist, Marion Hodgson, came up with a solution that has delighted everyone in the village by transforming the space into a unique depiction of what the shop sells (pictured right).
Marion tells me how she tackled the task and how the work took over her living room for the two months it took to paint:
“I wanted to show what the shop sells so I brought a few goods back home at a time, arranged them on a shelf and painted them. Andy Warhol it is not.”
Burton in Lonsdale, on the western edge of the Yorkshire Dales, is one of approximately 200 small rural communities in the UK which, rather than lose their only shop, took matters into their own hands and bought it.
In the four years of community ownership the shop has gone from strength to strength, and its success shows what an enterprising community can do for itself by calling upon the skills and energy of its individual members. Several of its customers help out by serving behind the till as volunteers; others help in innumerable different ways.
“Marion’s marvellous painting does the shop proud,” says committee member Jean Smith. “It shows what can be achieved when a community pulls together and how the creativity of one individual can make a difference.”
Horse sense
I asked my neighbour how his son, who is an agricultural student, was coming along with his studies.
He told me: “Well he still ploughs t’ same way, but he talks different. He used to say ‘Whoa, Ned’ when he gat to th’ end o’ t’ furrow and then ‘Gee up, lad’. Now he’s gone that posh he says ‘Halt, Edward. Pivot and proceed.’ T’ horse can’t understand him now. So it’s no good sending anybody away to learn farming unless tha sends t’ horse an’ all."
Competition winner
The winner of the competition in our September issue to win a bronze sculpture, ‘Wren on a Log’, by wildlife artist Eddie Hallam, was Kathy Simpson.
Paul Jackson
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