The Stone Curlews have all gone south but we are now seeing our winter visitors on the reserve. Large flocks of fieldfare have been seen (up to 1,000) together with groups of 100 or so redwings and similar numbers of starling. The most recent Winter Bird Survey saw 40 or so lapwing on one of the vacant stone curlew plots and a flock of something like 70 skylark on Curtis field, not far from the Portway. These are bigger numbers in general than have been seen on the reserve before, and a walk along the nature trail from the car park can be quite a spectacle as large groups of birds, particularly fieldfare and redwing are flushed from one berry- bearing tree to the next. There are other winter visitors to be seen. Sometimes one can just make them out, lurking and scurrying about in the damp winter murk.They are our heroic (and stoic) band of conservation volunteers - to whom we are very grateful! A small group of them can be seen here, battling on through the wind and rain, working on one of our butterfly banks. The weather cleared up a touch later on, and here's a photo of Pat looking much happier. ''I hope this doesn't mean crowds of paparazzi all round my house when I get home'', he was heard to say.
There are two butterfly banks on the reserve; they are in effect S-shaped heaps of chalk dug out by JCB into which we have sown wildflower seed and planted hundreds of wild plant plugs. Most of the reserve as an old intensively cultivated arable farm, is relatively flat, and the banks provide a choice of butterfly-friendly topographies - warmer on the south side, cooler on the north and shelter from wind from any direction. Plants added have been mostly butterfly larval food plants such as horseshoe and kidney vetches, rockrose, hairy violet, small scabious, devilsbit scabious and birdsfoot trefoil (for adonis blue, chalkhill blue (maybe one day!), small blue, brown argus, dark green fritillary, marsh fritillary, common blue and others) plus wild thyme, common centaury and greater knapweed. This last one was included in one of the seed mixes, but as it has turned out its growth has been very vigorous if not rampant, particularly at the top of one of the banks, and left to its own devices would shade out and inhibit those other butterfly-specific plants. Hence the need to keep it under control, and hence the work-party. It was quite hard work as the greater knapweed root is a tough so-and so and we were digging into fairly well-compacted solid lumps of chalk. The weather was a bit grim too. Still, nobody complained, and there was cake!
Roy Williams, Voluntary Warden Dec 2018. Photos by me!