The first Tuesday of the month brought together the usual suspects, but with the welcome addition of a new team member in the shape of Zoe, whose knowledge of all thing’s bee related is sure to be of use to the team over the coming months.
With a full complement of ten volunteers, the days tasks were divided into two main groups, the first group turning their hands to not only trimming and tidying the live hedge and cutting back the brambles in the car park, but to also cut back the vegetation that was encroaching on the small wildlife meadow behind the café and to carry out some general tool maintenance.
The second group walked the Butterfly Transect route, which had been previously agreed on by a local expert and our own group leader Ildi.
The purpose of this route is to monitor butterflies by counting the number and types that visit the park on a weekly basis and although this is on a trial basis, the aim is to start recording and reporting these numbers to the UK butterfly monitoring website next year.
This year appears to be a good year for butterflies and the group were pleasantly surprised to count nine different types of butterflies including the Speckled Wood, the Ringlet and the Clouded Yellow. The most prevalent was the Meadow Brown (Nine counted) and the Gatekeeper (eight). As the name would infer, the Common Blue was also up amongst the top scorers with seven.
Unfortunately, the only sign of a Holly Blue was the one hanging over the establishment of that name, where the team later found themselves chatting about the mornings efforts while drinking a most appreciated tea or coffee provided by the pub.
The group next meet on the 9th of September at 9am, and any new volunteers are welcome to come along and get involved.
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