Conservation Volunteers and Other Animals

Yesterday we had our monthly work day at Allerthorpe Common, controlling the birch regrowth which threatens to turn this increasingly rare lowland heath habitat into a birch woodland. We soon disturbed a wasps' nest, so had to avoid that area for the rest of the day. I was stung by a wasp last week and didn't want to repeat the experience - I react badly. Pellets from the Barn owl box We stopped for a coffee break and checked the barn owl box, which we were sure had not been occupied this summer. In fact, it contained a heap of pine 'cuttings', presumably nesting material for a grey squirrel, together with a number of barn owl pellets. It appears that neither species has actually nested there. Red-veined darter on a matching shirt Common lizard on a daypack  A not so Common lizard Red admiral on an oak tree At lunchtime, we were visited first by a Red-veined darter dragonfly, which landed on a volunteer's shirt, and then by a Common l...

I got permission to plant out 600 of my home grown tansy plants along the river bank at Acomb Landing in York. The stretch was once a good area for tansy beetles, with plenty of tansy, but the floodbank had been rebuilt and most of the tansy was lost. Just one good clump remained, and last week I counted 32 tansy beetles on it. Himalayan balsam and willowherb The floodbank had the best vegetation on it and the area within was covered in Himalayan balsam, so it made sense to clear some of the balsam and replace it with tansy. I started last Monday and spent the whole day pulling balsam and clearing the ground for the first tansy clump. The first planting area prepared On Tuesday it was wet from the outset, but I managed to clear a bit more ground and plant out two clumps of about 100 plants each. By lunchtime it was raining hard and my 'waterproofs' were soaked right through, so I had to call it a day. I went back on Thursday and Friday, cleared a huge area of ba...

In mid-August, the new generation of tansy beetles emerge from pupation and an army of volunteers start surveying the banks of the River Ouse around York, recording the location of every tansy clump and the number of beetles on each. Last Saturday I took my friend Meg to Naburn Lock and then drove round to Cawood Bridge, further down river. She walks south and I walk north, and we meet up around Stillingfleet. Tansy amongst the Himalayan balsam After half an hour of recording tansy plants, I stopped for a coffee break on the flood bank. A roe deer came out of the Himalayan balsam that lines the river bank here, stopped to look at me, and then bounded away over the flood bank and into the wheat field behind. I then walked a long stretch with nothing but Himalayan balsam about 10m deep, before reaching an area of 'waste' ground covered in nettles 2m high, willowherb, bindweed, and hidden in the middle, some clumps of tansy. Here there are beetles, and after an hour of fi...

Himalayan balsam is in flower and will be going to seed in the next few weeks, so the time to get it pulled is now! I've just spent the day at Fulford Ings, clearing along the bank of the River Ouse. It's tragic that balsam is coming up in the middle of tansy clumps, destroying the habitat of the endangered tansy beetle, known as the 'Jewel of York'. Where there is such precious vegetation, I pull out the balsam by hand, but in other places where it has reached saturation point, it can more quickly be removed with a long-handled slasher. Himalayan balsam on the river bank I'm trying to clear a half-mile stretch, just to the south of York. Further down river, the balsam has already reached saturation point along large stretches of the banks. It's not only displacing the native vegetation, but also damaging the river banks themselves. In winter, when the balsam dies down, it leaves bare earth which is easily eroded away. It's an environmental disaster,...

For a few weeks now, the badgers have ignored the peanuts I've put out for them. I've seen them emerging and setting off across the wood or into the fields, but there has been no social activity around the sett, which is so great to watch.  Badger approaches the peanuts Over the last few evenings, I've tried adding some sultanas to the peanuts and whether that has tempted them, or the dry weather has made natural food harder to come by, I'm not sure, but last night they came over to feed. The whole clan spent much more time around the sett than they have done recently. It was a cold night and I could hear them collecting bedding, dragging bundles of dry leaves along their paths through the brambles. Spring pheasant Badger food? In the spring a couple of pheasants regularly turned up to pinch the badgers' peanuts. Now they've been replaced by a small rabbit. It has been around for the last three nights and comes a little closer to me each time....

Last week I went to a conservation volunteer work day at Kiplingcotes Chalk Pit. As its name implies, this was once a quarry, but now it has become a spectacular chalk meadow, teeming with butterflies. At this time of the year the greater knapweed is flowering and nearly every flower had a marbled white butterfly on it. Our task for the day was to remove the ragwort which is poisonous to livestock, but we left a lot for the cinnabar moth caterpillars and other insects that depend on it. Marbled white on greater knapweed I realised that it would be a good place to return for a 'Big Butterfly Count', so I went back on Monday. The weather was not so good, being cooler and windy and it even started raining soon after I arrived. I walked along the track at the top of the reserve and in the 15 minute time limit I counted 55 marbled whites, two small whites, a large skipper, six meadow browns, two ringlets, a common blue and three six-spot burnet (moths). That's a total of ...

It was going to be a cooler, showery day, so I went to Fulford Ings to continue with some Himalayan balsam pulling. I spent most of the morning amongst two metre high nettles, getting stung continuously and rained upon intermittently. Would a monoculture of balsam be any worse than a monoculture of nettles? Neither is very attractive from a human perspective, but nettle is the food plant of the caterpillars of several of our most common butterflies, whereas the balsam is an alien which is displacing our wild flowers and damaging our river banks. The meadow in mid-June There's a bend in the river on the stretch I was working on and it wasn't until I stopped for lunch that I realised that the main meadow area, around the bend, had just been mown. I was shocked to see it so bare, as two weeks ago it had been a mass of wild flowers, just waiting for some insects to emerge. Now that we'd had some warmer weather, I was expecting it to be buzzing. Last year, when I met the ...