Sept Focus

Wilder Hook for Hook Focus – September

This summer we have been out an about locally including litter picks, the village show and the NGS Open Gardens at the Hook allotments. We have had our annual bioblitz on Mitchells field and led Nature Walks on Barley Heath.

Walking on Bartley Heath, as I write this article, the Marsh Gentian Gentiana pneumonanthe is in flower. A vivid blue flower found on wet heathlands, that is nationally rare, but found locally, although this year, far less due to the dry weather.

It was a very hot on Sunday, 12th July, when we held our Bioblitz on Mitchells field, but there was an abundance of things to find – and a background noise of buzzing insects and birdsong. It was lovely to see some new faces from Hook, and a big thank you to our experts – Alan, Pete, Steve, Marion and Mike who joined us and helped identify our finds. It is always lovely to talk to experts, as they give us some new ideas or recommendations as to what to look for or what to do to improve the biodiversity on Mitchells field. We also had a few people who tried out our nets, to see what they could find, and we chatted with a few passersby and were able to tell them about our dead hedges, the beetle bank and the work of Wilder Hook.

We saw around 200 different species, including a couple which are nationally rare. All our data will be recorded and sent to Hampshire Biodiversity Information Centre (HBIC) who kindly provided funding for identification guides and equipment. Recording helps Wilder Hook in its management of Mitchells Field, it helps local authorities from parish to county level, and it also makes sure that evidence is already available if a developer seeks planning permission in the area. You can't protect what you don't know about!

We were really excited to see hairstreak butterflies for the second year running, especially the rare White-letter Hairstreak, which sat on the Wild Carrot and we could all take a look and get a photograph (good evidence for recording our finds). The White-letter Hairstreak butterfly typically flies in a spiralling flight around Elm trees, where it lays its eggs. The next spring the caterpillars emerge and feed on the Elm. The mature butterflies will occasionally land on flowers such as Brambles or Wild Carrot for nectar. The Purple Hairstreak butterfly has a similar type of flight to the White-letter Hairstreaks and is found flying around Oak trees, with the eggs and the caterpillars living in the Oak. Our hedgerow in Mitchells field has both Elm and Oak and is an ideal place to look for hairstreak butterflies flying in the treetops in July and August.

The hedgerows were full of ripening sloes (Blackthorn) and blackberries which will provide food for caterpillars, birds and Hedgehogs. For the Bioblitz we had some Mammal Society Footprint Tunnels down, which we used to record footprints, and we found evidence of Hedgehogs at the top of Mitchells Field by the coppiced area, and at the bottom by our wildflower meadow.

One of our experts at the Bioblitz suggested some summer meadow maintenance, such as dead heading the Knapweed which had finishing flowering, because when unmanaged, it tends to take over and crowd out some of the other flowering plants. So, we had a morning at the end of July, where the team removed some of the Knapweed and Thistle seed heads. This is done by hand, to ensure other flowers such as the Wild Carrot and Fleabane are left untouched to support a health population of butterflies for the rest of the summer. It was really a good excuse to watch the Common Blue and Gatekeeper butterflies who were happily feeding on the Fleabane in the meadow. It has also resulted in a bit more air and light available to the lower lying flowers such as the Birdsfoot Trefoil, which are a good plant source for the caterpillars of the Common Blue butterflies. We also saw a female Wasp Spider, which is large and colourful with a stripey abdomen and legs (the stripes on the abdomen are in different orientations on each side), the male is smaller and less colourful.

Anna Shergold, Wilder Hook