Meadows – Grantham Ecology

2017 Retrospective – The Rest!

December 31, 2017Grantham Ecology1 Comment

I like to take the opportunity which the end of the year presents to look back over what I’ve seen and encountered. Some fall nicely into groups so do check out trees, wildflowers, butterflies, bees and invertebrates on their own posts!

The remainder are individual species or places which don’t form a group, but which are an important part of the year just passed. I hope you enjoy!

Easegill Bat Surveys

I was lucky to be invited along to a hibernation check in the caves in Easegill, Cumbria by a friend in the bat group there. We found a number of hibernating myotis and brown long-eared bats in the various cave systems, along with the tissue moths, herald moths and cave spiders which use the same habitats over winter. It was a great day out in some stunning scenery, and the opportunity to do a spot of caving whilst searching for wildlife was a real treat! You can read more, and watch a short compilation video, on this post from January 2017.

Snowy walk along Stanage Edge

It takes around an hour and a half for us to get to some of the most stunning walks in the Peak District; a bit of a trek but always worth the visit especially if there’s snow to line the fields and de-mark the landscape with its series of hedges and stone walls. I love too how the hills in the far distance can give an illusion of mountains when they become snow-covered!

Smooth newt – Lissotriton vulgaris

I couldn’t resist this photograph when we were undertaking translocations at the beginning of the year. The legislative driver behind the translocation is the great crested newt, but we take the opportunity to move any species we encounter to a place of safety. With the juveniles, such as this little smooth newt, you need to keep a sharp eye to make sure you spot them all!

Common frog – Rana temporaria

Spring is one of the most rewarding times to have a garden pond – when the croaking begins and the surface is a mass of calling frogs. This was taken on a cool March day when the frogs had decided that spring had sprung! In this photo, I tried to capture the turbulence of the water which these amorous amphibians bring to a placid garden pond.

Slow worm – Anguis fragilis

We encountered this slow worm under a piece of corrugated metal in the woods near Woodhall Spa in the early summertime. There had been a rainshower which caught us out and the slow worms too had taken shelter. As the sun came out and the corrugated metal began to warm, the chances of catching one reduced significantly as they are anything but slow when they want to be! These reptiles are in fact legless lizards rather than snakes. Their habit of sheltering beneath these artificial refugia forms the basis of the reptile survey technique we use in ecological consultancy to find out whether reptiles are present on a particular site.

Dandelion seedhead before the full moon

The was taken at Muston Meadows at midnight when the moon was full and I couldn’t resist a walk. The dandelion seedheads glowed white against the dark grass but I was struggling to capture this in a photograph – then I thought this might make an interesting angle!

Shropshire Hills

We spent a few days over the May bank holiday in Ireland for a wedding, coming back via Anglesey and spending a night in Shropshire on our way back east. We walked over the Long Mynd at dusk, heading back towards our campsite, and this was the view as we began to descend.

Church of Saint Mary, Whitby

A weekend camping near Robin Hood’s Bay in the summer found us in Whitby before walking back along the coast. This is the taken at the Church of Saint Mary – set above the town and referenced in Dracula. I was struck with this view of the tombstones dark against the long meadow grasses and wished this was a more common sight – cemeteries and churchyards can be beautiful places full of life after death, if they’re managed sensitively for wildlife rather than manicured as bowling greens!

Curbar Edge, Derbyshire

We had a survey site which saw me out in the Peak District until 7pm one evening in August – after which I took the opportunity to see the heather and take a walk along Curbar Edge at sunset. This is the view out across from the Edge as the sun was sinking low on the horizon.

Vancouver Island

The following are a few photographs from Vancouver Island this year – we encountered some spectacular wildlife and were amazed by the scenery. You can read more in my blog posts here, but below are a few highlights.

Anna’s Hummingbird in Victoria

American red squirrel at Long Beach, Tofino

Black squirrel in Stanley Park, Vancouver

Orca’s from Victoria

Grey heron reflection against the vending machines on the marina in Vancouver

Slow worm – Anguis fragilis

This tiny slow worm was one of this year’s juveniles – we were surveying a site in Somerset and this was one of seven young ones which appeared under a single survey mat where the sun warmed a bank at the edge of the site. When I picked it up, it wrapped itself around my finger but was so small that the nose and tail didn’t quite meet!

Sunrise on the day of Storm Ophelia

This photograph was taken of the countryside in Warwickshire on the day Storm Ophelia swept across the UK. At that time, I didn’t realise what was causing the effect but was just taken by the colours – it turned out that the day was to be filled with the pseudo-apocolyptic light brought on by the Sahara sands.

Cattle at Muston Meadows

Muston Meadows is an ancient haymeadow and a National Nature Reserve in Leicestershire. The site is managed with a late-summer hay cut and is grazed in the winter by cattle. I visited one frosty morning in December and they were delighted to have a visitor, charging over before stopping and checking me out. They then accompanied me all the way off the site so perhaps their role is security as well as site management!

Icicles under Burbage Bridge

On a snowy cold day in December, I took a walk through the white from the Longshaw Estate in Derbyshire, through woodland and across tors and encountering these beautiful icicles hanging beneath the bridge which takes the road over Burbage Brook.

Clematis seedhead – Clematis vitalba

These are also commonly known as old man’s beard and it’s easy to see why! I came across these seedheads in a hedgerow on a survey site in Bedfordshire where the wind had left them with this shape over time – I liked the feeling of motion which they held even when still. It seemed appropriate for seeds which are waiting for their time to take to the wind and begin a new plant elsewhere in the landscape.

Teasel seedheads – Dipsacus fullonum

On the same site as the clematis above, I also found an amazing stand of teasel seedheads. These striking plants are excellent for wildlife – in the summer they provide an abundance of nectar for pollinators such as bees and butterflies, and the winter seedheads will play host to flocks of goldfinches foraging for the seeds.

Green winged orchids at Muston Meadows

May 21, 2013Grantham Ecology4 Comments

Only a few miles to the west of Grantham along the A52, you might be surprised to learn there is a National Nature Reserve – Muston Meadows NNR. The fields are cited as one of the finest lowland meadows in England with over 30 species of grasses and over 100 species of flowering plant – this page from Natural England has further details.

The meadows are possibly at their best to the end of May or early June, before the first cut, when a wealth of wildflowers including vetches, pignut, yellow rattle and pepper saxifrage as well as the beautiful quaking oat grass. However, the stand-out species of the meadows is the green winged orchid to which the reserve is home to a colony 10,000 strong.

The green winged orchid (Orchis morio) is a rare species whose decline is linked to the decrease in the availability of nutrient poor grassland habitats – such as those found at Muston Meadows – in which it thrives. The green-wings refer to the green veined sepals which you can see in the image below; this differentiates the orchid from the early purple orchid which has similar purple flowers. They can also be distinguished by the lack of spots on the leaves which are notable in the early purple orchid. This specimen was low growing, perhaps only 6cm tall, so a keen eye may be required to pick them out away from the main patches.

Muston Meadows can be accessed through a gate directly off the minor road between Muston and Stenwith which passes along the eastern boundary of the reserve. There was always a sign which indicated the entrance although this was missing on my visit last weekend (19th May 2013) so keep an eye out for the kissing gate opposite the entrance to the Sustrans cycle path which leads off to Redmile. The meadows are a fragile habitat and Natural England do ask all visitors to keep to the public rights of way.

While you’re there, also look out for skylarks, a wealth of butterflies and hares which can often be seen especially after the first cut when the grasses are low.

Beautiful meadows at Easton Walled Gardens

July 4, 2012Grantham EcologyLeave a comment

Wildlife friendly gardening has been gaining interest for some time now, and this year seems to have attained a status close to dominance if RHS Chelsea was anything to go by. More numerous perhaps even than the stylised show-gardens were those on a natural theme; wildflowers were everywhere, although many were in bloom well before their wild counterparts suggesting that these were some of the most well-tended ‘weeds’ in the country. Meadow planting figured strongly in a number of gardens and retail stands seemed to follow the trend, with pots of ragged robin and buttercup adding colour and context to their products.

Easton Walled Gardens, by all accounts, was developing this theme before it was quite so fashionable and a visit illustrates the ease with which aesthetically pleasing displays can incorporate or even comprise, wild flowers and communities.

I have only visited the gardens once before, in snowdrop week in February, and was determined to pay another visit to what looked to be a fascinating project. Sweet pea week (running now until Sunday 8th July) seemed a good excuse to do this – if anybody has only visited for the spring bulbs, I would strongly recommend you see in the summertime too.

The use of wild meadows within the gardens is varied and original. The swathes of long grass beneath the trees within the woodland area is perhaps unsurprising, but their use on the terraces down to the stream is quite unique. Here, the sloping banks are unmown, allowing a mist of Arrhenatherum to form with wildflowers such as scabious and poppy adding instances of colour beneath. Trefoil creeps from the wild areas into the flat walkways which, alternating in strips, are mown short allowing you to walk between the banks of grassland without so much as brushing your legs upon the soft seed heads, nor interrupting the bumblebees which attend the meadows in their masses. These terraces stretch out on either side of the stone steps which descend between topiary shrubs to the plateau before the stream. It is perhaps this novel interpretation of a traditional formal landscaping design which makes the effect so successful.

From these steps, you can see the lie of the remainder of the garden. Over the stream is a superb herbaceous border which would take pride of place in any National Trust formal gardens and beyond, behind the border, is the deep, dark archway of an old yew avenue. Upon either side of this, complementing the heavy shade of the evergreens are light ephemeral meadows arrayed with glorious roses which seem to fizz and overflow from somewhere below the gossamer swell of grasses. One of the key concerns when incorporating nature into gardens is to display intent and these ebullient features, coupled with cut-grass paths which allow you to move through the medley, leave you in no doubt that this is design.

These are not yet species-rich meadows and the range of wildflowers is limited, but perhaps counter to common sense, a wildflower meadow takes time and care, or at least appropriate management, to establish. But it is beginning. The terraces were cleared of trees which had developed for fifty years before they were removed and this long-established habitat would have built up a good organic layer of soil, full of nutrients. Where nutrients are high, grasses will almost always out-compete the smaller, slower wildflowers, towering above and shading them out before they have much of a chance to get started, and those which do are the less aesthetically desirable ‘ruderals’ – species which specialise in quickly springing up and setting seed, moving between transient opportunities. Easton have a programme of removing these ruderals – thistles and ragwort specifically, before they have chance to flower with the eventual aim of reducing their presence within the sward. As for the dominance of grasses; this can be dealt with by reducing the fertility of the soil through cutting and removing the grasses throughout the season (taking the clippings away takes the nutrients with them) or, more drastically, stripping the topsoil to reach the more nutrient poor soil horizons. This occurs naturally when the meadows are grazed by livestock. Another trick is to sow yellow rattle – you can see this flourishing in Easton’s meadows – which actually parasitises the grasses, tapping into their roots and thereby reducing their vigour.

Walking back across the lawn, between swallows which skate across the grass as though on ice, the path takes you to the left into the vegetable garden and the delightfully named ‘pickery’ which is designed for just that – cut flowers abound. Right now, the centrepiece of this garden is the sweet pea collection – over sixty varieties on display and the opportunity to pick your own to take away. As well as the taxonomic arrays there are famous sweetpea’s from history, showing the development of this flower which as been so bred and refined. It is amusing to watch the bees visiting the peas indiscriminately and pollinating at will showing a callous carelessness for the years of linear selection which have created the unique lines, I wonder quite what cross-breeds would grow from the subsequent seeds!

Our visit was completed with tea and cake which are a highly recommended finale to any trip. And I should add, this brief description has concentrated on the meadows and wildlife; this is to say nothing of the giraffes grazing beside the cedar, the countless other plants and flowers of interest such as the collection of hostas and ferns in the shaded archway as you enter the garden, the developing orchard, the swing which was rarely un-occupied or the other myriad thoughts and touches which show the time which has gone into this garden. It is only 11 years into its restoration from its abandoned state and I look forward to returning to see how it continues to develop.

For more details on location and opening hours, take a look at their homepage here.