Beanhill

Friday July 3rd 2009 and the Wrekin Forest Volunteers assemble for a wet-start for a day's foray around Beanhill.
This is an area that most of us didn't realise existed. Rich in wildlife and like many of our precious green and brown spaces is under threat from developers. It would be a real pity if this was to disappear under brick and mortar.

The various meadows are abundant with insects with the surrounding areas awash with interesting plants.


Small woodlands also offer an interesting foray

Once the rain started to abate and the temperature warmed a little the butterfly life awoke and within minutes scores of Ringlets and Meadow Browns took to the air dancing and flitting over the tall grasses, the males searching for mates and the females laying their eggs.

Small and Large Skippers soon joined in. Both Nigel and I managed to click a pair of mating Small Skippers

There were many other invertebrates as well, of course;

2-spot Ladybird preparing for lunch!

Talking of Ladybirds did everyone notice the abundance of little orange and black 'diddly things'? They seemed to be everywhere.


I was pretty sure they were insect pupae as the discarded larval skin could be seen attached to one end and glued to a leaf. I can confirm (as Nigel's pic here informs) that these were indeed 7-spot Ladybird pupa. The other pic (again from Nigel) is a larva of the same.

As mentioned in an earlier post just about every Friday someone manages to finish up up in a somewhat ungainly heap on the ground. This week it was Lis's turn...

I think she's saying; "I'll be fine if Keith could just take his foot off my ankle", but I could be wrong of course! Hope you're OK Lis after your skid and tumble!

So as another great WuFuV day comes to an end we all hope that this fascinating area is saved and preserved for many generations to come

Announcements
The more I learn about the fascinating lives of moths the more I want to know! I think we all have a thirst for absorbing as much as we can about everything wildlife, and insects - particularly Lepidoptera - are my particular passion.

Although we're by no means experts Les and I are going to be running 2 moth nights in the near future - dates to be announced. One at Apley Castle and the other at Telford Town Park. As soon as we have everything finalised I'll let Pete know so that he can contact the network. Open to everyone no matter what level of interest.

Garden Moth Scheme
Moth traps the country over are seeing ever-increasing visits from ever-increasing species as the season's weeks go by. My own count last Friday was a total of 90 moths across 26 species - my highest so far. I've uploaded 9 months to the Yahoo Group (Moths Album).

On the run-up to a Moth-training day held by Dave Grundy at Alveley I was convinced we'd be actually learning how to train moths to perform all sorts of tricks and inspired by this somewhat misguided notion I set up the world's first Moth Display Team. This is the first picture released from the recent photo-shoot:-

I'd obviously got the wrong end of the stick again as it turned out we were there to learn how to ID moths, where to find certain species and to be generally over-awed by Dave's knowledge of the subject which is immense. Oh well, maybe someone somewhere can make use of my new-found talent. Trouble is - I just don't know how long I can keep the team together!

Location Competition
One final picture. Where is this? First with the correct answer wins yet another of my fab prizes from my little box of give-aways. Just drop a comment below. Can't see the comments? You need to go to the main blog www.wrekinforestvolunteers.com

Nigel has uploaded some more great pics from the day at Beanhill to the Wrekin Forest Volunteers Yahoo Group (Beanhill Album) http://groups.yahoo.com/group/wfv/photos/album/1482490430/pic/list

Here's my selection

Click for Slideshow.
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Whitchurch Drive

Thanks Keith for this post whilst I'm enjoying the sun in Corsica

Isolated between Junction 6 of the M54, its slip roads going north and the old A5 is a tongue of land rarely visited by humans, mainly due to the fact that to get to it you have to highly developed skills of fast traffic evasion.

Once there, however you discover another little Aladdin’s Cave of a site. Were it not for the constant din of traffic you could easily forget its situation. There are various habitats – dark and dingy woodland – an open marshy area – meadow and the infamous “peanut” traffic island.

Where are all the cars?

We met in the car park of a well known supermarket where the risk assessment was restricted to “Mind the cars”. After a brief diversion identifying plants at the side of the road we waited and waited for a gap in the traffic to cross. Eventually we all made it safely!

Two groups were formed, one to explore the interior of the southern end and the other the edge. The interior group plunged down the embankment into the dark and dingy wood; but it was not bereft and a few hardy plants were identified. After a while we headed towards the M54 and came upon an open marshy area which was abundant with life, including lots of orchids, and death – we believe a fox (or similar) takes it prey here. We found dead pheasant (probably) shrew, rabbit and rat plus other odd bits of skeletons.

We met the other group to explore the peanut. Unfortunately the contractors had got there first and cut down the grass and any plants living there. Miraculously we found several bee orchids that had survived the devastation. I seem to recall that there had been protests in the past about cutting this area and destroying the orchids and the council responded sympathetically agreeing to take care – they need reminding of this.

Finally we ventured onto the northern end of the area. This was mainly grassland and plants with a central stand of Scots Pine. Again this provided rich pickings for the botanists and was busy with insect life including a beautiful cinnabar moth.

A fine area but it is likely to deteriorate due to the large number of seedlings that are establishing themselves. I can see a winter task for the group coming along.

A selection of Orchids

Barracks Lane

I'm indebted to Keith for this post in my absence.

“I need a navigator” states Pete. “OK” responds Nigel and climbs into the front seat of the minibus. Pete shows Nigel where we are going on the map. “I’ve got the wrong glasses on” is Nigel’s response.

A good start! Fortunately Ollie and Liz had a good idea of where were going and, as it turns out, there were four road signs pointing to Barracks Lane.

The nature area at Barracks Lane is a series of quarries, long since fallen into disuse, lime kilns and pools. The site is split into two and, enigmatically, we had permission only to view the larger southern area from the path that ran through it, but were free to wander at will in the northern area.

The path through the southern area is a raised tramway used to service the kilns, and being a quarry, was steeply embanked. We needed to watch our step. This area was mainly a green, damp and gloomy place with tall trees fighting for the light and an abundance of hart’s tongue fern. Very few plants were in flower. In the canopy there was a symphony of noise from the jackdaws and their young. There were other birds about but would they show themselves?

Eventually we descended to the southern pool. This was quite large and bordered with some reeds, iris and a few other flowers. We pond-dipped this area later and discovered that the water was teeming with life; but it was devoid of birds (other than mallard and moorhen).

We moved into the northern area. This was a small area that had been planted but did have a pond. Lunch was taken at the side of the pond in the company of a host of amorous common blue damselflies which were laying eggs, mainly on the lily pads in the middle of the pond. After lunch some pond-dipped and others wandered “at will” seeing what they could find.

No-one fell in, but there was a very close shave when I tried to net a dragon fly, missed and almost overbalanced, and I was very concerned as Nigel got closer and closer to the water in his search for hydra. Lots of bugs turned up and one felt in awe as our detectives studied their books to identify them.

Overall this was a bit of a strange place but, surprisingly, it yielded a good list and mix of species including an “eyelash”.

Blog post by Keith Fowler