A Brimstone butterfly enjoying a red campion - photo by volunteer Anne.
This year's National Meadows Day is promising to be the biggest yet, with up to 100 events taking place across England, Scotland, N. Ireland and Wales in celebration of ancient wildflower meadows and their wildlife.
We’ll be taking part here at Pulborough Brooks nature reserve, holding a ‘Wild in the Meadow’ bioblitz on Saturday 2 July, searching for all of the plants, bugs, birds and beasties who live in the meadow. Drop in anytime between 11.30 am and 3 pm to help us find them all. We’ll have bug hunting equipment for you to use, we’ll be setting a moth trap and would love people to come along and join in, contributing their wildflower, bird and beetle identification skills.
Elephant hawkmoth - a regular find in our meadow moth traps at this time of year!
So why do meadows matter so much?
A healthy meadow can be home to over 150 species of wild plants and flowers, such as cuckoo flower, yellow rattle, orchids, knapweed and scabious, compared to much modern grassland which supports under ten species. In turn, these wild flowers support other meadow wildlife. Bird’s-foot trefoil alone is a food plant for over 150 species of insect, which in turn support birds such as skylarks and lapwings.
Just 3% of the meadows that existed in the 1930’s remain –that’s a loss of 7.5 million acres of wild flower grassland.
Over the past few years our teenage RSPB Phoenix Group have been helping us create a wildflower meadow on the reserve to provide a great home for nature and a lovely place for visitors to explore. Our bioblitz on National Meadows Day will be a perfect opportunity to see who has moved in!
Our RSPB Phoenix group removing the grass-dominated turf, sowing seeds and planting wildflower plugs.
National Meadows Day is just one part of Save Our Magnificent Meadows, a UK-wide partnership project, supported thanks to National Lottery players. It’s the UK’s largest partnership project transforming the fortunes of our vanishing wildflower meadows, grasslands and wildlife, led by Plantlife and primarily funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF). The project is bringing meadows back to life, with the restoration of over 14,000 acres of wildflower meadows across the UK.
You can find out more information on Save Our Magnificent Meadows project at www.magnificentmeadows.org.uk.
Led by Plantlife, the partnership is made up of 11 organisations and is primarily funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF). The partnership consists of Cotswolds Conservation Board, Medway Valley Countryside Partnership, National Trust Wales, Northumberland Wildlife Trust, Plantlife, RSPB (working in Scotland and Wiltshire), Scottish Wildlife Trust, Somerset Wildlife Trust, Ulster Wildlife, and Wiltshire Wildlife Trust.