Over the years the Friends have planted hundreds, if not thousands, of native daffodil bulbs in and around the reserve’s woodland. Some, sheltered at the bottom of Kestrel Field, flower in February but the rest wait for spring: a host of golden daffodils etc.
Continue reading “Native versus non-native”
Sometimes, New Year’s resolutions are just too hard. The media, for instance, has been busy this week suggesting dramatic eco-resolutions for 2025: give up plastic, rewild your garden, cycle to work, stuff you know you will abandon half way through January. We, the Friends of the Reserve, think you should take these things more gently.
Continue reading “Green New Year’s Resolutions”
There are thousands of species of invertebrates that overwinter in the leaf litter below the reserve’s trees and shrubs. Let’s not be too eager to sweep the autumn leaves from our gardens.
Continue reading “Let the leaves lie”
There are two recent reports that show the extremes of the UK’s conservation efforts. The first, this year’s Big Butterfly Count, reflects the decline in our insect populations, while the second, from the RSPB, shows how rapidly the situation can be turned around if we create the right circumstances.
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In the UK, the populations of our more common butterflies have fallen by 46% in the last 50 years while the rarer species have declined by 77%. We have lost 60% of our flying insects in just 20 years. We have entirely lost 13 species of our native bees since the 1970s and fully expect more to follow.
Continue reading “Insect losses”
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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Most years, in March, the reserve is visited by a pair of barn owls. As barn owls mate for life, this is probably the same pair each year looking for a nest site. They always set up a temporary roost in one of the oak trees in the hedge in the centre of the field between Church Lane and Lambrok Meadow and hunt across our fields in the early dawn.
Have any of you up-with-the-lark early morning dog walkers seen them this year? Please let us know if you have.
Changing temperatures are initiating plant growth earlier and earlier every year. In the reserve, there are already primroses in flower. While we might find the early flowering of daffodils and snowdrops encouraging, there are other species in the park for which it might be a disaster.
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There are thousands of species of invertebrates that overwinter in the leaf litter below the reserve’s trees and shrubs. Let’s not be too eager to sweep the autumn leaves from our gardens.
Continue reading “Let the leaves lie”
Wikipedia defines bioturbation as the reworking of soils and sediments by animals or plants. Here is a video of a system with and without soil fauna such as earthworms, mites and isopods over a 15 week period: this is what is happening to the fallen leaves all over the reserve.
Here’s a good news story: deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has fallen by 60%.
Continue reading “Amazon rainforest”
These are five spot burnet moths (Zygaena trifloii), dayflying nectar feeders. Regular contributor Cheryl Cronnie photographed this mating pair at the end of June.
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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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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”
The 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference, more commonly referred to as COP27, begins today in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt.
Continue reading “COP27”
by Ian Bushell
Email from Dr R.L.Brown, of Manaaki Whenua Landcare Research, NZ:
Continue reading “International cooperation 2”
by Ian Bushell
At the beginning of October, at the Amateur Entomological Exhibition at Kempton Park, I was introduced to Dr R.L.Brown from New Zealand, who was doing research into potential biological control of wasps.
Continue reading “International cooperation!”
In the summer, County Recorder Richard Aisbitt identified meadow foxtail (Alopecurus pratensis) in our fields, a tall grass with a furry flower head that looks like a fox’s brush: hence its name.
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Conservation is full of jargon, full of buzzwords and phrases that sound good. We all use them and we do it to save ourselves the trouble of proper research. We are trying to demystify some of these terms.
Continue reading “Habitat fragmentation”
People think of an uprooted forest when they think of habitat loss: orang utans starving in a palm oil plantation, the rabbits running from the machinery at the beginning of Watership Down, or the man-made desert of a dust-bowl. But habitat loss is, in the majority of cases, a lot less dramatic and much more ordinary than that, and often a great deal closer to home.
Continue reading “Habitat loss”
In the UK the populations of our more common butterflies have fallen by 46% in the last 50 years while the rarer species have declined by 77%. We have lost 60% of our flying insects in just 20 years. We have entirely lost 13 species of our native bees since the 1970s and fully expect more to follow.
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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.
Re-wilding projects, as a method of restoring Britain’s depleted biodiversity, are gaining support.
Southwick Country Park Nature Reserve 