Last weekend was the monthly volunteer Sunday work party once again and this month we were joined by 6 enthusiastic folk ready for a day on the reserve. And what a beautiful day it was too, hot and sunhny, in fact it was getting too hot by the end of the day - we are never happy with the weather are we!
The first task on the agenda was ragwort pulling. this is an annual task here at Langford and in some years is a lot easier than others - fortunatley, this is one of those easy years, with very little ragwort to remove from the Phase 1 grassland, especially compared with 2012. We remove ragwort for several reasons, the first being our legal obligation to do so where our land is within a certain distance of grazing animals. As there are cattle grazing the Trent banks and sheep grazing fields on our eastern boundary, we have to remove the ragwort from these areas. The second reason we remove it is that each year we cut the Phase 1 grassland for hay. If ragwort is left to dry out in hay, it still remains poisonous to grazing animals such as horses, cattle and to a lesser extent, sheep. Therefore we remove all ragwort from our hay so it can safely be fed to animals over the winter. But, never fear, we don't remove all ragwort from our site - it is left in place where we aren't near grazing animals and where we don't cut hay, so there is always something for the cinnabar moth caterpillars and the variety of other insects that rely on ragwort to eat!
The afternoon's activity was to remove some unsightly dead brash from the sides of the public footpath. This brash has been transported away from the area, greatly improving the appearance of the footpath. Any walkers will hopefully also notice we have cut the sides of the path where the vegetation was hanging over - hope this improves access for all using the path.
And as always, we are never disappointed with the wildlife on site and throughout the day we were entertained by oystercatchers, lapwings and common terns on Phase 1, meadow browns and ringlets everywhere on the public footpath, black-tailed skimmers and emperors around the water's edge and perhaps the record of the year so far on Phase 1....a clouded yellow butterfly, spotted by Julie (many thanks Julie!), it is my first since 2006 and the first Langford record since 2009. Like painted lady's, clouded yellows are migrants - coming to the UK from north Africa and southern Europe. Also like painted lady's, they have occasional 'irruptions', when many thousands of individuals make the journey to the UK, whereas in other years, we see very few. Many individuals stay near the coast, but they do also venture inland, as this one has and after a 7 year wait, it is fantastic to finally see one again!