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Several GNS members attended the funeral of Mrs Mary Palfrey, as St Edward’s Church, Stow on the Wold today.  She had been fighting illness courageously for some time, and remained in touch with GNS members until near the end.

Mary was an enthusiastic and expert botanist (entirely self-taught, as mentioned in the eulogy); she was a keen gardener and horticulturalist, and regularly attended the Chelsea Flower Show.  In botanical terms she specialised in the flora of Cotswold limestone grasslands, where she made many plant surveys, often in conjunction with the Farming and Widlife Advisory Group, which made her a lifteime achievement award for her contribution to knowledge of the flora of these habitats.  Fortunately her surveys have been kept and will form a long-standing record of the condition of these sites in her time, of great relevance for future monitoring and management of these sites, so typical of Cotswold Gloucestershire

She was for many years a member of the GNS Executive Committee, retiring only recently, and her active contribution to the running of the Society was much valued by other Committee Members.

We shall all greatly miss her, her wise counsels and her friendly expertise.

Mike Smart

Hon Chairman, GNS

From Margaret Woodward:

Hi,  Mike Smart has requested any personal memories of Mary Palfrey for the website so here is a first from me.

I first got to know Mary when I volunteered to help her “stuff” the GNS Journal (as it was then known) and the Bird Report. This involved me in a round trip from Cheltenham to Quedgeley to collect several boxes of magazines and transporting them to Maugesbury where Mary would have the envelopes all ready to receive the magazines. In the early days we had to lick both the envelopes and the stamps but we soon moved to self-seal envelopes and then to the non-lick stamps with which we have all become so accustomed. Over a cup of tea and cake we would talk about matters of general natural history – in my case mostly birds – and I soon came to realise the breadth of Mary’s knowledge especially, but not exclusively, in the field of botany.  Mary had an excellent relationship with her local Post Office and on most occasions the postman would collect several heavy bags from her house which meant that we did not have to carry them.

When Mary moved into Stow itself this arrangement continued, but on several occasions we did load the boxes back into my car and transport them up the road where by this time the Post Mistress was actually putting the stamps on for us – another job we didn’t have to do.

The Bird Report was a particular problem as we had to get special heavy duty envelopes to take the weight of each book and weigh the bags or boxes as the post man had a limit to what he was allowed to carry – not that we were able to manage more anyway.

This arrangement  which ensured that members received their publications in a timely fashion continued for over 10 years – I forget how many – with Mary and I getting together about 6 times per year to recreate our little production line.

On the day I rang to make arrangements for the latest meeting I found it difficult to take in that Mary was telling me that she could no longer carry on as she had been diagnosed with Cancer. After that new arrangements had to be made but I am glad to say that the publications are still being produced and still being mailed to all GNS members.

I saw Mary several times during her illness and she was always her welcoming and friendly self. Still interested in wildlife and particularly botany.

I miss the times I spent working with Mary and the chats we used to have and I know that there are many other people with their own memories.

Margaret Woodward

A long term project on willow tits within the Forest of Dean by Robin Husbands and Nick Christian is now well underway thanks to support from local groups, including a financial grant from GNS. The study’s aim was to discover how many breeding pairs of willow tits were present in the Dean and to then use that information to monitor breeding success and identify the specific habitat requirements of this species.

So far the study has revealed a good deal of information, particularly with regards to nesting requirements, breeding behaviour and threats from predators. To help record the breeding status of willow tits within the Dean, Robin and Nick would be grateful for any information of known locations for this species (particularly whether they are present within the West Dean, Wye Valley and outlying woods to the north and east) and can be contacted on 01594 542185 (Robin) and 01989 567122 (Nick).

Full information on the project will be presented within the next issue of GNS News (March 2013) so look out for the details.

The proposed field meeting at Lower Lode at 11.00 a.m. on Sunday 6 January had had to be cancelled because the river banks are inaccessible as a result of flooding.  The level of the Severn has been very high since Christmas, and though the Severn has dropped a little, most of the riverside meadows are still deeply flooded.  Thus the main B4213 is still closed at Haw Bridge, and minor roads like the road from Tirley to Forthampton, and the road leading to Lower Lode are still under deep water. In the Coombe Hill area, the whole of the meadows are under water, and the course of the River Chelt is invisible, so deep is the water.

We will hope to re-arrange the meeting at a drier date!

Simon Lawton, Curator of the John Moore Museum in Tewkesbury, has asked me to let you know of this event.

Saturday 26 January 2013 – 7.30 pm

The John Moore Museum – Church Street, Tewkesbury

‘What makes British wildlife special?’ – a talk by British Naturalist Stephen Moss

For full details please see here: 20130126 John Moore Museum 26th January Event Poster (Word document).

Note that it is essential to buy your ticket in advance.

Dear Fellow GNS Members

GNS was established in 1948, as a Society to encourage an interest in natural history; in the last ten years, the emphasis has been on recording of natural history in Gloucestershire, and in encouraging greater interest and expertise in recording, particularly among young people.  Our Society has never aimed to own or manage nature reserves, which is why many GNS members were involved in the establishment of the Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust in 1961, and have supported GWT over the last 50 years.

For over 30 years, Dr Gordon McGlone has been the Chief Executive Officer of GWT, and has led it from being a small local initiative, to its present status as a body with 27,000 members, a highly qualified staff of 40, an annual budget of two million pounds, a portfolio of over 60 reserves, and the major voice in the county for nature conservation.  He was awarded a well-merited OBE for his services to conservation.  As Chairman of GNS, I have always felt that it is essential for GNS to be in close contact with GWT, which is why I have been a member of the Board of Trustees of GWT for the last ten years.  From this privileged position, I have been able to see at close quarters Gordon’s immense achievements: among them (though there are many others!) I would highlight:

• greatly improved management of GWT reserves in the county through recruitment of committed and highly effective staff;
• promotion of conservation through the wider countryside, through development of “Living Landscape” projects in the Severn Vale, Forest of Dean, and Cotswold Rivers (with more in the pipeline);
• continuous increase in numbers of members, and hence a greater awareness of environmental issues among the public;
• a concern not only for nature reserves, but for people’s involvement with wildlife;
• much greater influence among public bodies in the county, through advocacy of environmental issues with local MPs, County and District Councils, and local business leaders; thus Gordon has been the first leader of the county’s new Local Nature Partnership;
• a constant concern for the effect of climate change on the county’s flora and fauna, and a concern to look forward at GWT’s tasks in the next 50 years;
• specifically in the last few months, active and balanced involvement in the issue of the proposed badger cull, and a decision to test badger vaccines on GWT reserves; moreover, Gordon has often been the spokesman on badgers for The Wildlife Trusts at national and European levels;
• at national level too, Gordon has been one of the leading lights in developing a national strategy among the other 46 county Wildlife Trusts.

Gordon has recently announced that he is standing down as CEO of the Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust, though – happily – he will continue in a personal capacity to be involved in local and national conservation issues.  At the Annual General Meeting of the GWT in mid-November, the Chief Executive of The Wildlife Trusts, Stephanie Hilborne, and Professor Adrian Phillips (former Director of the Countryside Commission) paid moving tributes to Gordon and his work.

I am sure that members of the Gloucestershire Naturalists’ Society would wish to join me in paying tribute to Gordon, and wishing him well in his future activities.  GNS has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with GWT, pledging our cooperation in providing data on the county’s wildlife.  Those of us who attended the GWT 50^th anniversary event at Stanway House in 2011 will recall that Gordon explicitly singled out GNS in his review of bodies that had cooperated with GWT in the previous half century.  I am sure members will wish GNS to continue along these lines, and to work with the new CEO (and also with the new Chairman of the GWT Board of Trustees) when they take up their positions.  I shall make it a priority to contact them both on your behalf at the first opportunity.

Yours sincerely

Mike Smart

Hon Chairman

P.S.  I haven’t written the usual piece on the weather in the last three months, as it’s been so complicated, that it needs a bit more reflection and data collection.  An account of the Gloucestershire monsoon in the second half of 2012 will therefore appear in the first GNS NEWS of 2013.  Let’s hope 2013 will be a bit drier!

Six members attended the Farmland in Autumn meeting. Because of heavy rain, the walk was shortened to a quick tour of the new orchard where there are nearly 90 varieties of Gloucestershire apple. Despite stories to the contrary in the press about the fruit harvest in Britain this year, there is a reasonable crop here, though it is ripening several weeks later than usual.

The catalogue of the GNS Library, which is held at Hartpury College, is now online at http://library.hartpury.ac.uk/liberty/opac/search.do

Include gns in the search. Only the first 200 results are returned for any search, so be specific, for example search for gns beetles.

Thanks from GNS to Emma Stevens, manager of the Learning Resource Centre at Hartpury.

Dear Members

The members of the GNS Executive Committee are largely active field naturalists, who like to be out and about recording natural history in the summer months; so there is a general agreement not to have summer Committee meetings – though you may be sure that we keep in touch by email and other methods.  As a result, there is little to report on formal business in the last few weeks, other than the news that the application to establish a Local Nature Partnership (LNP) for Gloucestershire has been formally approved by the government; this was not a foregone conclusion, as only a limited number of such partnerships were intended.  Much of the groundwork was carried out by staff of the Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust, to whom great credit is due.  It is intended that the new LNP will be made up of a small number of influential organizations and members, who will play a major role in promoting conservation of nature: so we shall all be following the future activities of this body with interest.

It never rains but it pours!  After two dry winters, the heavens finally opened in late April, and it has barely stopped raining since.  The area where I spend most of my recording time is the Severn Vale, which has seen a very wet summer indeed: not a summer of dangerous flooding threatening life and property, as in 2007, when exceptional local rainfall in July was followed by an onrush of rain coming down the Severn from higher up the catchment, but a constant succession of very wet days, which provoked very high water levels and meant that much of the Vale has been subjected to a series of moderate floods.  Even now in early August, many Vale farmers have been unable to make hay in their lower-lying fields, and some of them despair of ever doing so, with standing water still remaining in many places.  One concern, expressed by the Floodplain Partnership, which keeps a close watch on the botany of the Vale and of similar sites in other part of the country, is that failure to cut hay will produce added nutrients in the meadows (on top of all the organic material and fertilisers carried by the floodwater), thus affecting and altering the vegetation; even so, some key plants are well adapted to the occasional summer wetting, notably my own particular favourite, Great Burnet, which seems to my very amateur botanical eye, to have prospered in many areas.

These wet conditions have of course affected the birdlife: it is clear (not only from general observations, but also from more intensive ringing studies), that small birds have had a poor time of it, with many species that nest in thick vegetation near the ground being washed out by repeated rises in water level.  Birds like Reed and Sedge Warblers, Willow Warblers and Chiffchaffs, even Reed Buntings which do not undertake such long migrations, have clearly produced very few young, partly because many of their nests were washed away, but also because the damp conditions must have reduced available insect food.  Species which nest directly on the ground, including many waders – notably Lapwings, Curlews and Redshanks, all of them in national decline – have registered almost zero productivity.   The onset of the season in late March and early April looked promising, with Lapwing chicks already hatched, and Curlew and Redshank preparing to breed by the middle of April; but many clutches of eggs and most of the chicks were overcome by rising floodwater in early May; when the first floods dropped in late May, several Lapwings and even a few Curlews laid replacement clutches (unusually for Curlew, it would seem, as they have a very long incubation and fledging period, and repeat clutches would continue very late into the summer).  Many of these replacement clutches came to grief however in the second period of flooding in July, though one or two Curlews (perhaps nesting on slightly higher ground) were successful, and young fledged Curlews were seen at relatively late dates in late July and early August.

On the other hand, some birds which favour deeper water provided a pleasant surprise by successfully bringing off young.  Every year, small numbers of Shelducks, familiar from the estuary but much less numerous in the Vale, occur in spring; they nest in holes, either rabbit holes or cavities under hollow trees or the boles of pollarded willows, but rarely seem to breed successfully.  This year several pairs succeeded in bringing off broods of ducklings, a rare event.  Similarly Tufted Ducks and Little Grebes, not to mention hordes of Coots, have done well and an unusually large number of family parties have been seen.  Perhaps the extensive floodwater meant that their nesting sites were less accessible, and hence less disturbed, so they were able to raise their families without intrusion from external factors?

Thus differing conditions produce variable outcomes.  Recording the subtle variations in the reaction of flora and fauna to weather conditions remains an ever rewarding and interesting occupation.  I’m glad to note that more and more members are noting their observations in the “Sightings” section of the GNS website www.glosnats.org .  All these observations from people with different interests and specialities contribute to the overall picture.  Please continue to post your sightings, even the smallest note is of interest.  Keep up the good work!

With best wishes

Mike Smart

Hon Chairman

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