No week is the same working on nature reserves, and one week in mid-May this year really summed up how all our work can pay off in Giving Nature a Home at RSPB Winterbourne Downs. Rather it seems that nature is starting to make itself at home on the reserve as was epitomised by a week full of new revelations and wildlife sightings this May.
Monday: It started on the Monday 13th May with an excited telephone call from our volunteer researcher, Stuart Corbett, with news that he had seen some Duke of Burgundy butterflies, close to our border with Porton Down. Great news as the Duke of Burgundy was high on the hit list of chalk specialist butterflies which we wished to attract to the reserve. Stuart was rather smug as he only predicted about a month earlier that the very same location would be a good spot to look out for colonising Dukes. He also recorded our first marsh fritillaries of the year (34) near one of the chalk butterfly banks.
Tuesday: I followed up Stuart’s marsh fritillary sighting with a visit to the area we had seen up to 50 the previous year and over a hundred caterpillars this spring. It was a delight to witness a major emergence of hundreds of adult marsh fritillary butterflies.
Wednesday: Okay no revelations from the Wednesday, but no doubt a good day turning the cogs of change in the office.
Thursday: Volunteer stone-curlew surveyor, Barry Duffin, confirmed that we had four pairs of stone-curlew chicks on the reserve. This is really impressive for mid-May, and good team work with our warden Nicky Quinn.
Thursday (again): My lunch time escape from the office was to investigate the results of a little translocation experiment. A couple of years previously I had noted adder’s-tongue fern growing in my lawn just above the River Bourne in Porton. These are quite scare ferns characteristic of very old pastures. Last year I must have had about 80 plants so I thought I would see if I could transplant a turf with a couple of plants in a similar location just above the River Bourne a couple of miles upstream at Winterbourne Downs. I sat down in much the same place 15 metres out from the second bush from the water trough and after a bit of staring wishfully into the grass rather amazingly found six adder’s-tongue fronds.
As I was on my hands and knees for a little while when I heard what sounded like a curlew, but dismissed at a stone-curlew trying to get melodic - until the calling bird flew overhead with its elegant curvaceous beak stretching out before it. A Eurasian curlew was flying south following the River Bourne.
Friday: We had a report of a Black kite seen at the reserve. An exotic end to rather special week.