Here's some pictures of the litter that was collected at Dove Stone on Sunday - ten bin bags full in the space of a morning from just one part of Dove Stone.
As well as two tents we picked up glass bottles, plastic bottles, beer cans, drinks cartons, straws, crisp packets, nappies, cigarette packs and on and on...A big thank you to Claire and Karl for picking all this rubbish up. Good work but sad and pretty outrageous that it needs to be done really. And really hard to understand that the people who leave litter care so little about the environment that they presumably come to in order to enjoy the beauty of the landscape. And that's not to mention the effects on wildlife of left litter. At the weekend I picked up a beer bottle that had been thrown away at Dove Stone and when I tipped it up 13 dead Violet Ground Beetles fell out. The other day one of the RSPB team removed a plastic carton from the top of a thistle head - a very effective way to stop any butterflies and bees from feeding on a plant.
Violet Ground Beetle
We really do have a throw away, disposable culture. We use 8 billion plastic bags a year in the UK (2011). 8 billion. And on average these are used for just 12 minutes. That's all. How long does it take a plastic bag to biodegrade ? The answer is that they don't; they just break down into smaller and smaller bits that contaminate our soil, waterways and seas. More on this subject in the near future, plus details of ' The Big Pick-Up!' at Dove Stone, coming soon.
On a more positive note, the warm weather means that there's still lots and lots of butterflies to see at Dove Stone. At the weekend there was a Comma on a nettlebed next to the main car park, which just goes to show that wildlife can be seen in the places you might least expect ! I also saw at the weekend Gatekeepers, Ringlets, Meadow Brown, Small Skippers, Large White, Green Veined White, Small Heaths as well as a few day-flying Antler moths . I'm sure there would have been other butterflies around as well that we see regularly such as Speckled Wood.
Comma
Ringlet
The best butterfly sighting of the day for me though were large numbers of Small Tortoiseshells which I think are the freshest looking that I've ever seen with really bright, intense colours. Still time to submit your buttefly sightings from your garden, local park or other greenspace to Butterfly Conservation's Big Butterfly Count www.bigbutterflycount.org
Small Tortoiseshell
On the bird front sightings from the weekend include Raven, Wheatear, Bullfinch, Treecreeper, a single Lapwing flying over and along Dove Stone reservoir dam wall before heading off towards Alderman's Brow, Peregrine, Goldfinch, Meadow Pipit, large numbers of Black Headed Gulls on Dove Stone res, Swallow, Jay, Great Spotted Woodpecker, Greenfinch, Great, Blue and Coal Tit and Kestrel . Nothing to be heard from Common Sandpipers who having bred will have left to begin the return journey to Africa. More soon...
Lapwing