Looking forward to
July

Botany walk



The botany walk at Castley was enjoyed by a good-sized group, who were not at all put off by a couple of light showers, nor by the prevailing odour of slurry on nearby fields!

The group listed over 130 species in this small area. These included some interesting flowers, such as Leopard's-bane on the roadside, a lovely bright-yellow flower, and some good clumps of Water Figwort in ditches. Spring flowers such as Large Bittercress, Dame's Violet and Sweet Cicely decorated the riverside. The botanists also enjoyed close encounters with 3 Red Kites.

Plant native!

If you're planting your garden, native plants will encourage wildlife. The Natural History Museum's Postcode Plants database generates lists of native plants and wildlife for any specified postal district in the UK.

Click here then on the Search menu

Wildlife in
July

High summer - at last.

• Gatekeeper butterflies
• Chiffchaffs singing
• Migrant Hawker dragonfles - maybe a Lesser Emperor?
• Baby frogs underfoot
• Bog asphodel on the moors
• Roe deer rutting
  

More here

Plants now

Numerous web sites advise how to wipe it out, the Highways Agency spends hundreds of thousands of pounds trying to extirpate it and it is the only weed dignified with an Act of its own (the Ragwort Control Act), which specifies how its spread can be controlled, particularly on land used for horses and livestock. It does contain alkaloids which poison animals which eat it, but they won't normally do so if it is alive (it tastes bitter and the smell crushed is such that the Scots called it 'Stinking Willy'). Only when it is harvested with grass, when it loses its taste and smell and is easily eaten, does it become a threat.

Even if we could destroy ragwort, it would have major effects on wildlife. At least 30 species of insects and other invertebrates are totally dependent on Ragwort as their food. 52 insects are known to regularly feed on Ragwort as a significant foodplant - it is well know as a food plant for the Cinnabar moth. Trying to eradicate ragwort risks losing other similar plants - St John's wort, tansy, hawkweeds, and so on - which may have much more fragile populations.

Feather forecast



Take a walk in the Washburn Valley, around Dob Park, and try to spot a spotted flycatcher! This undistinguished little brown-and-buff bird has the delightful habit of sitting still, then dashing out to catch a passing insect, and returning to its branch to wait for another - diagnostic behaviour which helps identification no end!

They are among our latest summer visitors and in national decline, but last year we had a good season. The upper Wharfe is actually now a more likely area - try Lower Grass Wood and Littondale - but Strid Wood has been reliable in the past.

A black-and-white bird behaving in just the same way is probably a Pied Flycatcher. Strid Wood and Grass Wood, and Folly Hall Wood in Washburndale, are local strongholds, with breeding helped along by nestboxes. Again, 2005 was a good year, and perhaps 2006 will be another - this year's warmer weather will help the birds in their search for insects.

Nature Notes
by Jenny Dixon
featured in Wharfedale Newspapers

Flying ladies

By the time you read this column, you may well have already seen the advance guard of a huge invasion. 2009 is set to be a Painted Lady summer. This attractive orange butterfly, its black forewings blotched with white, is a migrant from North Africa. Some arrive every year but the last time an influx on this scale occurred was in 1996. This year the first-comers were sighted on May 21st; numbers built up and headed north. The Butterfly Conservation web site contains reports of observers seeing thousands streaming overhead at Portland Bill in Dorset and fifty insects per minute flying in over the Norfolk coast. Having just returned from a holiday on the west coast of Scotland, I can confirm that small numbers had reached the shores of Loch Fyne by the 30th May, where we saw them flickering over the bluebells and rough pastures, no doubt keen to feed after their long journey.

And, what a journey! The first wave set out from North Africa as vegetation there dries up. They reach southern Europe and breed there. The next generation emerge and fly north to us. It seems incredible that such fragile creatures should be able to cross the sea, withstand the vagaries of the weather and elude all the predators which no doubt accompany such a mobile buffet, and still have the strength to mate and reproduce. What happens at the end of our summer is still a mystery. It seems likely that the summer brood return south. It has even been suggested that these insects make the entire journey back to Africa in one generation. Though obviously there are butterflies back there to start the next cycle, apparently there is no evidence to support this. I couldn't quite imagine what such evidence might look like, so consulted our WNS expert. He explained that there is good evidence of a return to Europe of our other common migrant, the Red Admiral: sightings of clouds of departing butterflies near the south coast and further sightings in France. Nothing similar for the Painted Lady - so far.
And so - what about Wharfedale? Well, our expert has already had reports of sightings of seven to ten at a time. I've only seen one - in a friend's Ben Rhydding garden. However, numbers will build up, and even more so when the second brood emerges. Before that, there will, of course, be painted lady caterpillars, Their preferred food plants are thistles and nettles on which the bristly caterpillars, black with a yellow trim, create their silken tents where they can feed safely.

Another cheering thought: late last summer, after a disastrous season for butterflies and moths, we suddenly had an influx of Small Tortoiseshell from the continent. Perhaps some of these will have survived the harsh winter to appear in our gardens over the summer. Let's hope so.

More of Jenny's articles here .