As always with British summers, the heat and humidity built to very uncomfortable levels and finally reaching boiling point on Monday night. The storm broke good and loud and I have to say it was nice listening to the sound of rain again – I’ve certainly missed it and looking around Lakenheath Fen you’d have to say the grass has missed it too!
The rain was followed by a flurry of activity here as everything emerged at the same time. Birds were darting to and fro after the insects, butterflies were flitting about everywhere and the grasshoppers and crickets started their chorus. Everything seemed to feel refreshed and energised again for a short time at least but let’s face it – the breaking of the storm didn’t exactly bring with it any cooler temperatures!
So we’ve still been keeping work parties shorter than we’d like, purely for the health and sanity of our volunteers (and us)! This morning we were out starting a task that you only want to do for a few hours at a time anyway – pulling common ragwort. I blogged about the reasons for pulling ragwort last year, but the main thing is that we only remove ragwort from areas used for grazing or hay cutting. It is good for many species, particularly the cinnabar moth whose caterpillar feeds on it. You can spot the caterpillars a mile off (almost) and their bright colours warn birds of their unpleasant taste from ingesting the plant toxins.
Photo credit: Ali Blaney – cinnabar moth caterpillar on common ragwort
As David mentioned in his blog on Sunday, many butterfly species are also attracted to this plant as a source of nectar so it’s good to leave it where we can. Removing ragwort from the grazing marshes though will be a priority task for us over the next few weeks, before the plants set seed. But now we’ve had some rain, the rest of the vegetation will no doubt spring into action again and strimming will also remain high up on our task list.
One plant that is flourishing right now is hemp agrimony, a lovely tall flowering plant that can be found at various locations around the reserve. Although not related to hemp or cannabis, this is where the common name comes from as the leaves are very similar. It’s also known as ‘raspberries and cream’ - my photo below will hopefully explain that one!
Photo credit: Ali Blaney – hemp agrimony
Keep an eye out for this plant in areas of damp grassland, wet woodland and riverbanks – it’ll also be a good way to spot small tortoiseshell and red admiral butterflies who find the nectar from this plant particularly tasty.
Bittern watch continues tomorrow and after the excellent outcome of last week, we’ll hopefully witness further successful nest and fledging activity. If the next storm holds off that is....it could be a wet one!