No 97 Spring 2020 ON THE WING www.bedsnorthants-butterflies.org.uk Butterfly Conservation The newsletter of Bedfordshire & Northamptonshire Butterfly Conservation Branch Field Trips 2020 Sunday, May 17th Fermyn Woods Country Park Moth and Butterfly Day (Joint event with Back from the Brink) Meet at the Skylark café at 9 a.m. to look at moths caught in the traps by Mark Hammond. Breakfast provided from 9.30. Please contact Douglas Goddard by email ([email protected]) or phone (01604 408670) by 12th May so that we know how many to cater for. Car parking fees apply. From 10.30 a.m. a visit to see how our winter conservation work has helped Dingy and Grizzled Skippers, Green Hairstreaks and other spring species in the park. Sunday, May 30th Sharpenhoe Clappers In past years a summer field trip venue, but this year looking for key Spring species - Green Hairstreak, Dingy Skipper and Small Blue. Meet in the NT car park at 10.30 a.m. Grid Ref. TL064296. Leader Dave Chandler. Sunday, June 21st Glapthorn Cow Pasture Open Day We will be on hand from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. to search for the elusive Black Hairstreak. Park in the lane opposite the wood entrance, Grid Ref. TL006903 and join us in the wood from 10 a.m. The local Wildlife Trust will be on site in the afternoon. Leaders: Douglas Goddard, Dave James and Andy Wyldes Sunday July 5th Moth and Butterfly Morning at Pitsford Reservoir A repeat of our successful event of previous years. A joint event between the Beds and Northants Branch of Butterfly Conservation and the Wildlife Trust BCN to celebrate the moths and butterflies at Pitsford Reservoir. We will be meeting at 10 a.m. at the Fishing Lodge for coffee and then open the moth trap with an expert from the Wildlife Trust. After this there will be a walk around part of the reserve to look for butterflies for the rest of the morning. Due to limited spaces booking is essential. Please contact [email protected] or by telephone 01604 780148. Sunday, July 12th Fineshade Wood (Joint event with Back from the Brink) Come along to see a range of arboreal species if we can beat the 23 including Silver-washed and Dark Green Fritillaries, White-letter Hairstreak and Purple Hairstreaks and White Admiral and Purple Emperor. Meet in the courtyard of Top Lodge, Fineshade, Grid Ref. SP981983 (Postcode NN17 3BB) at 10.30 a.m. Car Park fee payable. Leader: Douglas Goddard Please refer to our branch website for any changes/cancellations to events due to the uncertainty of the ongoing Coronavirus outbreak Cover: Large Skipper caterpillar Photo Andy Wyldes BRANCH MEMBERS’ DAY 2020 Sunday, 19th April, 2 – 6 p.m. Maulden Village Hall, Flitwick Road, Maulden MK45 2DP Easily accessible from M1 and A6 AGM followed by updates from Caz Temple on Woodland Wings and Susannah O’Riordan on Back from the Brink GUEST SPEAKER Peter Eeles CANCELLEDThe Life Cycles of British and Irish Butterflies • Refreshments *** BRANCH PHOTOGRAPHIC COMPETITION *** • Entries may be posted with entry fees to any member of the committee beforehand (see back page) but please note will not be returned. There will be four categories: • The Chairman’s Shield The Best British Butterfly in the wild. • The Don Askew Memorial Shield This includes Branch Activities, Field Trips, Winter Work parties, Sales Events, Members etc. • The Butterfly Conservation Shield The Best Picture of a Butterfly or Moth in its early stages (egg, caterpillar, pupa etc) • Best British Moth Shield Best Picture of a British Moth. Rules for the photographic competition • All pictures to have been taken in the last year. • Prints to a maximum of A4 size can be entered with a maximum of three entries per category. Entry fee 50p per print. • Entries will be assigned numbers on the day so please do not add names to prints. • Prints may now be manipulated as the photographer wishes. • Winning entries are to be available for publication on the branch website and in the Branch Newsletter. Creating New Butterfly Habitat Douglas Goddard Fermyn Woods Country Park As well as the much-publicised reintroduction of the Chequered Skipper, Back from the Brink Fermyn Woods Country Park is one of the best also highlights the Dingy and Grizzled Skipper sites in Northamptonshire for seeing Dingy and among its target species for conservation. We Grizzled Skippers. Most years we have held are pleased that the project area now includes guided branch walks as part of our summer Fermyn Woods Country Park for this purpose. We programme and very successful Moth and are publicising winter work parties and events Butterfly mornings. As the park is an open site jointly to help public engagement with both our it is not possible to graze it with stock and branch and the project and are working closely maintenance of the valuable butterfly habitat with park staff on the conservation of these has been done by volunteer effort by Beds butterfly species. and Northants branch members as part of our winter work party programme. Increases in the In order to create new butterfly habitat in the growing season as a result of climate change park, money has been allocated from Back from has made it increasingly difficult to keep the the Brink to create scrapes in the grassland. This site clear of scrub to the level desired. Removal involves hiring a digger and removing the grass of the scrub by hand and brush cutting has led and topsoil, leaving bare ground. This has been to rapid regrowth and recently we have started done on areas leading towards and including a to treat this by painting. We are grateful to Liz couple of the banks on the site. The soil removed Morrison, Outreach Officer forBack from the is then deposited nearby to establish a new profile Brink Roots of Rockingham, for coming along of banks and ditches on which vegetation will to do this. It is planned to train others for this. regenerate and be managed for the two species. This was done during the last week of January and further similar work is planned for the autumn. 4 please look out for this and let us know if you are interested. We would like to express our thanks to Susannah O’Riordan and Liz Morrison, Hilary Monk and the staff of the country park for facilitating this venture for the benefit of our butterflies. We are also grateful to the number of loyal volunteers who have supported work parties on this site for a number of years. Special mention needs to be made of Mick Groom our branch member who has worked tirelessly in recent years in the thickets in the country park, restoring habitat for the Black Hairstreak for which this is now a very important location. Our thanks go out to the Country Park rangers who have carried out all the initial ground work The scraped areas will be allowed to regenerate naturally initially and surveyed for botanical interest and the butterfly populations, particularly of the target species Dingy and Grizzled Skippers, will be counted and monitored to assess the impact of the intervention. Seeding with a wildflower mix or use of plug plants will be done if necessary to compensate for any absence of the larval food plants of these species. The areas will be maintained annually to keep the ground sward short and leave areas of bare ground, either by mowing in late summer, or brush cutting and hand clearance by volunteers, with treatment of cut stumps. Management needs in this regard will be assessed at the end of each summer, bearing in mind regrowth and weather influences, in conjunction with the Beds and Northants branch and, if appropriate, other wildlife bodies. We are looking for volunteers to carry out a butterfly transect in the country park and the adjacent Fermyn Woods and a training session Photos Douglas Goddard on this is being planned for the spring, so Finding Butterfly Pupae June 2019 Douglas Goddard One of the great things about watching and one attached to a stem of the foodplant studying butterflies is that every year is different around a metre from the ground and on further and there are always new discoveries to be investigation two more in close proximity, while made. Prior to 2019 I had never found a Black I had also spotted another on the top of a leaf. Hairstreak pupa in the wild despite a number This made a total of four within a space of a few of field guides stating that this is the easiest square metres. I then encountered another one stage of this species to find. In early May, at a ten metres away, this time on a horizontal twig successful training day on the Black Hairstreak on a new sprig of blackthorn a metre above the arranged by Caz Temple as part of Woodland ground. Wings and attended by representatives from other branches, some discussion took place Some pupae appeared much darker than others, on the finding of pupae. After the explosion in which I took to mean they were approaching numbers of adults which had taken place in 2018, emergence, but Peter Eeles (Life Cycles of this was surely the year to look for them. British and Irish Butterflies 2019) identifies two different colour forms, black and brown. Both During May, several searches for larvae and forms with their white markings are similar to pupae in Fermyn Woods Country Park and Salcey a bird dropping. The ones on leaves appeared Forest proved fruitless and frustrating.