On Wednesday, Ian found a dead hedgehog:
“Returning to the car park, towards the bottom of Simpson’s Field, I came across a dead hedgehog. It had been eviscerated, so most likely was killed and eaten by a badger. This is the first evidence of hedgehogs in the reserve since 2014.”
Here is a link to a recent post about the complicated relationship between hedgehogs and badgers.
Message from Tom [08:46 24/05/2023]
A friend just found these in her front garden. They look like swifts. What do we do?
We humans reserve a particular dislike for things that we think might hurt us: wasps, spiders, brambles, thorns and …. stinging nettles.
Continue reading “Nettles”
Next week, work will begin on fencing part of the tributary stream that runs at the bottom of Village Green.
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Here’s a Good News Story…
..among all the doom and disaster we seem to have inflicted on our home planet.
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We have been making what might seem to our followers like a great fuss about the planting of just a very few disease resistant elm trees. Here are parts of a post from March 2020, which explain what disease our precious saplings are resistant to, and why we are so eager to get them established in the hedge between Cornfield and Sleepers.
Continue reading “Tree planting”
by Ian Bushell
On April 10th we checked the fifteen Dutch Elm Disease Resistant trees, donated by Peter Shallcross and Frank Crosier, that we had planted in April 2021.
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Before you drag the pressure washer out of its winter hibernation, let’s talk about the ecological importance of the moss growing between your patio pavers.
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iRecord Butterflies is a free app for your smartphone that will help you identify and record any butterfly that you see in your garden. Your sighting will be logged by Butterfly Conservation and added to their records.
Continue reading “iRecord”
When we planted up the wetland scrapes in Lambrok Meadow, a reader asked why we try to persuade people to keep their dogs out of the scrapes and how dogs can damage biodiversity.
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There is always a gang of children, sometimes junior schoolers, sometimes older, playing somewhere in Village Green woods. The personnel changes as one by one gang members lose interest in sitting round a damp campfire, drinking mix-up or smoking what somebody sold them as top quality weed. But new arrivals come to fill the empty places and the gang continues.
What have they been up to?
Here is a link to the spring 2023 edition of the Wiltshire Mammal Group newsletter, where you will find, on page14, a contribution from wildlife photographer Simon Knight about the reserve’s water voles and water shrews.
When you have read Simon’s piece, browse the rest of the newsletter; it’s full of interesting details about local efforts to conserve Wiltshire’s mammals.
Planning applications 18/10035/OUT for site H2.4, and 20/09659/FUL for site H2.5 have been accepted, while application 20/00379/OUT for site H2.6 has been rejected. The livestream is still available on Wiltshire Council’s website.
Do badgers eat hedgehogs? Yes, they do.
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This is the letter that the Friends of Southwick Country Park have sent to the Strategic Planning Committee and local councillors, a last plea for sanity before the Committee meets on February 22nd to consider Planning Applications 20/00379/OUT, 20/09659/FUL and 18/10035/OUT.
This year, consider making room in your garden for native wildflowers. The easiest and most environmentally friendly way to do this is to let the buttercups, dandelions and hawkbits in your lawn grow tall and flower.
Continue reading “Consider wildflowers”
Pictures from Simon Knight of the new wetland pond in Lambrok Meadow and the two new backwater scrapes. They are slowly filling in this rain. As the weather warms, keep an eye out for the pioneer plants that will move in and provide cover for the our wetland creatures.
Geological scientists have decided that the Anthropocene has to be properly defined.
Continue reading “Anthropocene II”
Every Christmas, the National Trust publishes a report on the ways in which the year’s weather has affected the UK’s wildlife. This year, after the summer’s extreme drought, we can clearly see some of those effects in the reserve.
Continue reading “Annual report”
SET-ASIDE
Some years ago, an area at the top of Kestrel Field was set aside from the rest of the field and its agricultural calendar. The reserve would be unmanageable without the help of our tenant farmer, but we also recognise that the twice yearly grass-cut does damage the habitat of some of our wildlife species.
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A month ago we had COP27; now we are all the way up to COP15. What is going on?
Continue reading “Cop15”
Treat your garden birds with a Christmas bird table. Here are some suggestions:
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Birds need clean water for both drinking and bathing whatever the weather. We know you put out clean water for your garden visitors during the drought but please don’t forget they will need the same support as the temperature falls and natural sources of water freeze over.
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Which is the greener option when it comes to Christmas trees: real or artificial? A real Christmas tree is a beautiful and traditional addition to our commercialised modern Christmases but it comes with a frisson of guilt. Should we be cutting down trees at a time when our struggling planet and its biosphere need all the trees they can get? Fear not; the news is good.
Continue reading “Christmas tree”
Southwick Country Park Nature Reserve 