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Orchids at Caudle Green

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Contributed by Richard Beal.

When we first moved here in 2000 there were only one or two orchids in our meadow. We have followed a strict mowing regime designed to restore the natural state. It is cut twice a year and all the cuttings are removed, to lower the nutrient levels. As a result the number of orchids has steadily increased. We get Common Spotted, Pyramidal and Common Twayblade, and once a Bee orchid.

This year there have been more than ever, with hundreds of Pyramidals including two white ones. This photo shows an area with lots of Pyramidals:

20120717 225 QFH Pyramidal orchids

Here are two Pyramidals, one white, one normal.

White Pyramidal Orchid

Coombe Hill Meadows 16/07/12

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At the west end of Coombe Hill Meadows this evening two female Shelducks with nine ducklings, five Tufted Ducks, five Little Egrets, 27 Grey Herons, a Great Crested Grebe, a Sparrowhawk, an Oystercatcher, three Common Sandpipers, 50 Swifts, a Kingfisher, 20 Sand Martins and a Redstart. Dragonflies included an Emperor, a Brown Hawker, a Banded Demoiselle and numerous Common Darters.

Sparrowhawk in gardens at Woodmancote

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A sparrowhawk was seen in the gardens at Woodmancote Cheltenham on Saturday afternoon. Blackbirds were squawking loudly and when it flew off it was carrying a blackbird. The neighbourhood was quiet for some time after.

Colour ringed Curlews, an update.

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Contributed by John Sanders.

In the Septembers of 2010 and 2011 a total of 96 Curlews were trapped at the high tide roost at Wibdon Warth, Tidenham, and were fitted with unique combinations of colour rings.  Birdwatchers were asked to look out for these birds, so that their site faithfulness and longevity could be determined.  Sadly, enthusiasm seems to have waned, and I now find myself as the only person who has made recent records.

Curlews started to leave the estuary in early February, and all colour ringed birds had gone by the middle of April, so that only about thirty unringed individuals remained during May.  These clearly did not breed, and were assumed to be first-summer birds, as it is generally agreed that Curlews do not start nesting until their second-summers (third calendar years).  The return to ‘winter’ quarters started in the middle of June, and numbers rose rapidly at the end of the month and in the first week of July, so that soon over five hundred were coming into the roosts.  These included several juveniles, but most were adults in very obvious wing moult.  This suggests that the nesting birds start their moult before their young have fledged, and then quickly leave their breeding sites to return to the estuary.

It has been difficult trying to cover the three main roosts at Aylburton Warth, Guscar Rocks and Wibdon Warth in the prevailing wet and windy weather, but even so the results to date (12 July) have been very encouraging.  I have seen a total of 61 colour ringed birds since mid-June.  These have included individuals from presumed breeding sites in Oxfordshire and North Yorkshire, but, what is more surprising, is that two breeding birds from The Netherlands, two from Finland, and one from Germany have already returned to the estuary.  This means that the only known foreign bird not to have been seen so far is one more from The Netherlands.  It took me a long time to find the bird that frequented Coombe Hill and Ashleworth Ham during the late spring, but I eventually tracked it down to the roost at Wibdon Warth, just a few yards from where it had been ringed.

It is early days yet, but the results so far clearly show how site faithful the Curlews are, and how dependent they are on a relatively small feeding area. Even the foreign breeding birds are absent from the estuary for only a short time in the spring and early summer.  Any change to this environment, such as the construction of a barrage, is going to affect them adversely.  We must not take them for granted.

Three Water-dropworts, 5 July

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Oenanthe silaifolia at Twyning
Oenanthe pimpinelloides at Brookthorpe
Oenanthe fistulosa at Twyning

I photographed and compared the three species of Water-dropwort that can still occasionally be found in meadows in the Severn Vale.

Narrow-leaved Water-dropwort (Oenanthe silaifolia) flowers in late May or early June in wet grasslands, and now the domed heads of the fruiting partial umbels clearly differentiate it from Corky-fruited Water-dropwort (Oenanthe pimpinelloides) which sometimes grow in drier parts of the same meadows. In the latter species the ripening fruit are held much more upright, so the partial umbels are almost flat-topped. Furthermore, it flowers in late June or early July. A third species, Tubular Water-dropwort (Oenanthe fistulosa) is just now coming into full flower. This also likes very damp conditions. It is a smaller, stockier species than the other two, often with only three rays to the umbel, which bears its fruit in globe-shaped bunches when they are ripe.

Ashleworth verge flora, 30 June 2012

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Common Spotted Orchid

Common Spotted Orchids (Dactylorhiza fuchsii) putting on a beautiful show on a road verge in Ashleworth. This is within feet of the part of the verge that was unwittingly damaged in spring when it was used as a compound for water supply works to the village.

Walmore Common 26th June

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Still a pair of Curlews on territory here and another bird flew over south mid-evening. Also a surprisingly good number of gulls on a wet field included c.300 Black-headed with two first-summer Mediterranean and two Common Gulls amongst them. At least 12 male Reed Buntings are on territory in the area and the usual few Brown Hares were present.

Cinderford Northern Quarter grasslands

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The grasslands are looking lovely, brilliant with butterflies and with flowers such as the unusual Grass Vetchling, (Lathyrus nissolia).

Grass Vetchling

This is what happens with 40 years of neglect of industrial land. “Brownfield” sites like this are sometimes thought to be without wildlife interest, but are actually some of the richest sites in the county.

Letter from the Chair, May 2012

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Dear Fellow Members of GNS

In recent Letters from the Chair, I have referred to the lack of rainfall, and expressed the hope, the prayer even, that it might rain.  You may remember – it seems a long time ago now – that a drought was officially announced in early April 2012, but in the second half of the month my prayer was answered: it never rains but it pours (see the separate note on the weather in the last three months in the June issue of GNS NEWS).  Those wetlands in the Severn Vale that were suffering from lack of rain in the early months of the year have been flooded throughout late April and early May.  This has clearly caused havoc among birds that nest on or near the ground: we know that nesting Lapwings at Coombe Hill and Ashleworth (some of which had started nesting in mid-March and already had chicks by mid-April) have lost eggs and young, as have Redshank and Oystercatcher; it looks as though passerines like Sedge and Grasshopper Warblers have suffered too, while Whitethroat and Reed Bunting have had to build new nests and lay replacement clutches.  But the water levels were nowhere near as high as in the midsummer floods of 2007, and water levels have already dropped; undoubtedly, plants like Great Burnet (which seem to be adapted to sudden spring and summer floods) will come back strongly.

Since the previous issue of GNS NEWS, the Annual General Meeting has taken place, and the Minutes, published in draft in the June 2012 issue of GNS NEWS (with many thanks to our valiant minute taker, Andy Bluett) will give those of you unable to be present a flavour of the content of the meeting.  I would like to highlight issues raised there, notably our grants programme, our subscriptions, and our role in local conservation campaigns.

The speaker after the AGM was Dr Rachel Taylor, from the British Trust for Ornithology, who presented a brilliant overview of the results of bird-ringing and other BTO surveys; as one who has taken parts in some of these surveys, I found it fascinating to see just how my own observations made a contribution to the larger national picture.  One of the reasons we had invited her to speak was that the first of the GNS larger grants (mentioned in a previous Letter from the Chair) had aimed to kick-start a BTO programme that will enable observers to submit sightings of colour-ringed birds online; we understand that our initial grant has persuaded others to make contributions, so that the project will definitely be brought to fruition.  Since that first larger grant, two others have been approved by your Executive Committee, one relating to the purchase of a first rate butterfly site by Butterfly Conservation, the other to the production  of the first ever Red Data Book on bryophytes in Gloucestershire.

The butterfly site is Rough Banks, covering 18 hectares on the scarp of the Cotswolds four miles north-east of Stroud.  It is part of the Cotswolds Commons and Beechwoods National Nature Reserve/ Site of Special Scientific Interest, and is well known for holding four species of blue butterflies; it is a proposed site for re-introduction of Large Blue.  The Society’s policy on grants says that grants will normally be given for projects related to the Society’s principal aims: biological recording, environmental education and public awareness of natural history; thus we would not normally give grants for land purchase.  In this case however the Committee felt that the site was of very high significance in the Gloucestershire context, and that there was an opportunity to improve relations with Butterfly Conservation and thus improve recording of butterflies in the county; a contribution towards the purchase price of £200,000 was therefore approved.  We understand that the purchase has gone ahead and that contracts have been exchanged, but that Butterfly Conservation would still be grateful for any further contributions.  If anyone would like to contribute on a personal basis, they can do so via http://www.justgiving.com/roughbanks .

The other GNS grant approved is for the publication of a Red Data Book on Bryophytes (or mosses) of Gloucestershire by the county bryophyte recorder, Peter Martin, in close collaboration with Richard Lansdown.  The project will involve collation of existing records, collection of new records and some training in identification of mosses; the final document will be of major importance in conservation of sites for bryophytes in the county; it will be published as a special issue of “The Gloucestershire Naturalist”, and will therefore be distributed to all GNS members.  If anyone is interested in taking part in the training programmes, please look out for notices in GNS NEWS or on the GNS website.  Mention of the GNS website leads me to remind you (as I noted at the AGM), that we have an improved website, thanks to Richard Beal who has put in a great deal of work in developing it.  One section of the website which allows anyone to post their own recent sightings of natural history observations: it’s very easy to do and often gives fascinating updates on local natural history issues; I hope any member will feel free to enter observations, and to draw the attention of other members (as well as anyone out there in cyberspace) to all the interesting natural sights to be seen in our county: just contact Richard for a login name, and you can start posting now.

The AGM also discussed the possibility, to which I have referred in previous Letters, of an increase in members’ annual subscriptions to GNS.  The Executive Committee has felt that the subscription rate (which has not changed for about twenty years) should be increased to keep the Society on a healthy financial footing, and so a proposal on an increase will be put to a Special General Meeting, to be held in conjunction with next year’s AGM in March 2013.

As regards local conservation issues, the AGM concluded with a lively discussion of the Society’s role in local habitat and species conservation issues, particularly relevant in the light of the new National Planning Policy Framework, about which the current GNS NEWS carries an article.  The general conclusion, further discussed by the Executive Committee at its latest meeting, is that GNS on its own is unlikely to have the weight and authority to carry out campaigns on these issues but that, through its network of recorders and experienced naturalists, it could very well feed basic information into such campaigns – “provide the ammunition”, as one speaker commented.  We shall certainly aim to collaborate with other like-minded bodies, such perhaps as the planned Local Nature Partnership.  We look to members to keep us informed of any issues that merit such treatment.

With best wishes

Yours sincerely

Mike Smart

Hon. Chairman, GNS

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