Heathland is a pretty tough place to live in but it’s still a really important place for wildlife – it is home to very special creatures that have developed special skills – what I like to think of as superpowers – which help them to survive.
Now that the ling heather is in flower you'll see plenty of honeybees - as well as making honey, these bees can give directions by dancing, pollinate flowers and are all round great team players.
Along the sandy paths and scrapes of bare ground look for the volcano-shaped mounds of sandy soil and you could be lucky enough to find a Pantaloon Bee. Females of the Pantaloon Bee excavate their nest in sandy soils and whilst they are solitary bees they will often nest in a grouping with others. The females first dig the main burrow, which may be 60 cm deep. Then they dig side burrows in which the eggs are deposited, each in its own cell. The adults are seen from late June to the beginning of September. Females are easy to identify: on the hind legs there is a plume of long, golden hairs used to collect pollen which make it look like she is wearing rather splendid pantaloons. I’ve found the overspill car park to be the best spot.
Amongst them you could find digger wasps - who will often predate the solitary bees, stocking their underground nests with the paralysed creatures ready for their larvae to feast on as they hatch.
In turn, these larvae are parasitized by the rather beautiful ruby tailed wasps! It's quite a dangerous world out there!
(Thanks to Pete for the two wonderful photos!)
By the ponds you should spot dashing dragonflies - the perfect predators with their fast flight, superb eyesight, powerful jaws and bristle-covered legs and the more delicate damselflies. The emerald damselfly is my favourite.
Photo by Frank Prince-Iles.
If you're quiet you could sneak up on the young common lizards who have taken to basking on the log benches next to black pond. Lizards have a number of 'superpowers' ; they're pretty speedy and they're well camouflaged. But if this fails them they have the incredible defense mechanism of being able to 'drop' their tails, which then continue to wiggle for several minutes, distracting their predator whilst they can scuttle off into the undergrowth. They can regrow their tails but they always remain rather stumpy and short. One of the young lizards has already lost it's tail - or as I like to put it 'has had a bit of an adventure'.
Juvenile common lizards (Photo by Anna Allum)
Lowland heathland is a rare, man-made habitat created on nutrient-poor sandy soils by people using the land for grazing animals and for turf cutting. Sussex has lost 90% of its heathland – much of it has been converted to commercial conifer plantations, and other areas lost due to lack of management. What is left is fragmented. With the loss and decline of the habitat, the wildlife that depends on it has also declined.
Work has been underway to restore the heathland here at Pulborough Brooks for the past 10 years but it’s not finished yet; there is a constant battle with birch and bracken which quickly colonise any bare ground and shade out the heather we’re trying to regenerate.
We're now working in partnership with a number of conservation organisations across the South Downs National Park as part of a Heritage Lottery Funded project 'Heathlands Reunited' . Over the autumn and winter over 700 hours of volunteer time were committed to ‘tree popping’ – removing the birches roots and all. No doubt this work will continue over the next few years.
This summer (in the next week or so) we’ll also be getting more of the bracken sprayed. Bracken is notoriously tricky to control; if you cut it back it simply re-grows and no livestock will eat it. The highland cattle do help to reduce the bracken cover as they bash and crush the stems as they roam the heath.
Bracken spraying will be taking place in Black Wood, the central heath and on the Triangle and these areas will be closed off for 48 hours whilst spraying is taking place. The public footpath and outer loop around the central heath will remain open throughout.
We use a bracken-specific herbicide to ensure that we don’t damage the beneficial plant life. We have to time this carefully to ensure that it’s not going to rain in the 24 hours after spraying so that the herbicide can be absorbed by the bracken and not run off into the water. We also need to avoid any high winds to avoid ‘drift’ onto other areas. Buffer zones are left around water bodies.
I'd certainly recommend a heathland safari at this time of year but please don't get distracted by all the wonderful creatures and miss any signs informing you of the work that's underway!