The reserve’s ivy flowers between September and November; each plant’s flowering season is quite short but a succession of plants flowers all through the autumn. The flowers are small, green and yellow, and so insignificant-looking that many people don’t realise that that they are flowers at all.
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A late summer southern hawker photographed in the reserve last week by Clive Knight. The southern hawker’s flight period runs from the end of May right through into November but each individual dragonfly lives for only around six weeks. This one, to judge by it’s faded colours and torn wings, is approaching the end of its life.
The summer’s drought made difficulties for our dragonflies. Many of the shallow pools along the Lambrok dried up completely and the big pond, Grand Central Station for our Odonata, was reduced to a mere puddle. Not only do all dragonflies and damselflies need standing water for successful breeding, but so do their flying insect prey: nowhere to lay eggs, nothing to eat, not a good year.
EDITORIAL ERROR
While driving a website without due care and attention, our editor has managed to permanently delete all comments made after September 5th. The comments section is important, particularly while so much work is going on in the reserve, and your opinions are valuable input. Please, feel free to repost if your comment has disappeared.
Most of our willow warblers will have left by now; they will be on their way to sub-Saharan Africa where they will spend their winter. Theirs is the longest journey undertaken by any of the park’s migratory birds. Why do such tiny birds fly so far and take such risks to do it?
Continue reading “Willow warbler migration”
Symbiotic fungi explained by David Attenborough.
Header image taken in the reserve by DKG
Scrapes 2 and 3 of Wiltshire Wildlife Trust’s ABBA project will be backwaters lying alongside Lambrok Stream. A backwater is essentially a shallow pond connected to a waterway, providing still-water habitat away from the flow and turbulence of the main stream.
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Wiltshire Wildlife Trust’s ABBA project is creating three wetland scrapes in Lambrok Meadow.
Continue reading “A new pool”
The nighttime temperature is dropping and soon we will see the first frosts. The reserve’s invertebrates are preparing for hibernation.
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Robins, both male and female, sing almost the whole year round with just a pause after the breeding season, when they go into hiding for the moult.
Continue reading “Winter song”
Ecosystem engineers are organisms that modify their environment. They increase biodiversity by creating habitat for species other than themselves. The oak apple, caused by a tiny wasp called Biorhiza pallida, is just such an engineered environment.
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Among the many grasses that grow in the reserve is WILD OAT (Avena fatua) which has an intriguing method of dispersing its seeds.
There are several families of magpies in the reserve. This year’s crop are, as yet, short-tailed, loud- mouthed and clumsy, hanging out in gangs and still learning to fly properly. But, despite their dramatic black and white beauty, their reputation is poor.
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Oak trees produce thousands of acorns every year. Somebody has worked out that an oak tree can produce ten million acorns over its lifetime. In a good year, they carpet the ground under the tree and crunch underfoot.
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A recent study has found that the best kind of camouflage, out there in the wildwood, is pretending to be an inanimate object.
Continue reading “Camouflage”
A hornet, drinking at the Iris Pond, photographed by Clive Knight. Ian Bushell, our entomologist, has identified it as a queen.
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This is a common drone fly (Eristalis tenax), named for its mimicry of a male honeybee. It was first identified in the reserve in 2019.
Continue reading “Common drone fly”
Wiltshire Wildlife Trust is undertaking a 5 year project of “practical action, innovative community and business engagement and high-level strategic planning across the River Biss and its tributaries”. The project is called ABBA: A Better Biss Approach.
Continue reading “ABBA”
Clive Knight’s weekend picture of the heritage orchard shows how quickly it is recovering from the grass fire of August 20th.
Continue readingPlease note that the date of the RSPB visit has changed. It is no longer scheduled for Wednesday September 14th but for Thursday 15th.
Thursday September 15th, the RSPB will be visiting the reserve. There will be a stand next to the path, somewhere near the main car park, manned by an RSPB representative, there to answer questions, discuss the organisation’s work and recruit members.
The RSPB stand set up somewhere near the sea.
The RSPB is leading a nation-wide effort to monitor and protect our birds in the face of the present climate emergency. Drop in for a chat, consider joining them: our birdlife needs all the help it can get.
Header image: immature robin photographed in the reserve by Cheryl Cronnie
We are not the only nature reserve struggling with increased visitor numbers. Here, David Attenborough presents a twenty minute documentary about Richmond Park, showing us a biodiversity not dissimilar to Southwick Country Park’s own, and wrestling with very similar difficulties.
Please comment below. The problems of sharing our few public green spaces with our threatened wildlife in a damaged biosphere grow as our population grows, and we all need to find solutions.
At the end of August, Ian checked the pond that we are developing with Wiltshire Wildlife Trust in the hope of attracting great crested newts to the reserve.
(Here are some links to previous posts about the pond’s development: ONE TWO THREE)
Read on for Ian’s report
The Guardian reports that a European pine marten (Martes martes) has been spotted in London for the first time in more than a century.
Continue reading “Pine marten”
Southwick Country Park Nature Reserve 