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| A snake skeleton. Photo: Hayley Partridge. |
At the start of the month we were introduced to
unconfirmed county wildlife site surveying. Several landowners were contacted
about land which was of potential county wildlife site standard. When we visit
a site, we make detailed descriptions on a map, noting the National Vegetation Classification (NVC) type, major
features, species lists and management. An area can also be county wildlife
site standard if it meets a certain criteria – for example, it it has at
least five Devon notable species and is over 0.5 ha in area.
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| A Hornet from the moth trap. Photo: Daniel Hosking. |
We had our last visit to the site in the Avon Valley this
month, where we finished hedgerow surveys in two additional fields and looked
for signs of mammals. We also dug some pitfall traps to try and find some of
the insect species present. The main insects found were ground beetles.
We also carried out another bat survey using bat detectors, and placed two moth
traps. One moth trap only managed to attract a couple of hornets, while the
other only managed to attract four species of moth, compared to 27 last month.
This is most likely due to the time of year. We only found a
single pipistrelle when searching with the bat detectors. However, we did see a
badger. The Anabat bat detector did pick up both greater and lesser horseshoe bats in
addition to pipistrelles as it was left overnight. All the results from the
data collected at Avon Valley over the last few months will go into a report.
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| Bullhead. Photo: Daniel Hosking. |
During September, we attended a riparian management
workshop in Liskeard. The workshop involved a walk around a farm which had good
water management practices, and the talk was mainly aimed at farmers who were
looking to improve the quality of the water in the river by preventing
agricultural runoff and bank erosion. A lot of the work required permission from
various agencies such as the Environment Agency. Some of the methods shown
involved fencing a certain distance from the river bank, limiting the area
livestock can drink from by using gates, preventing them from disturbing the
river bed and limiting the amount of extra nutrients that can be added to the
river from livestock waste. While on site we were lucky enough to catch a
glimpse of a kingfisher which flew past!
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| Sunset in the Avon Valley. |
The majority of work this month was carrying out marsh
fritillary butterfly larval web surveys. As the devil’s-bit scabious was in
flower, it was easy to target areas to look for webs. Results varied from
having 4 webs to over 100 being found at a site. A highlight for us was the
discovery of several new marsh fritillary populations which had not been
previously recorded as having any webs or adults. It was great to see how
pleased landowners were when we found a new population after they committed so
much time to maintain a suitable habitat for these butterflies. While in the
field, we saw many common lizards and deer. On Common Moor, a grass snake
skeleton as well as an adder skin was found!
BBC Spotlight came to the Cookworthy office during
September to film a small segment about the seed harvesting and spreading going
on in the county. Particular attention was paid to the Devon Wildlife Trust as
this is one of the first years where they have harvested their own seed, due to
the cost of buying it. The segment was aired on BBC Spotlight on the 15th September. We also carried out our last Riverfly survey
this month, and also attended a team meeting.
We also spent a couple of days in September at university,
analysing the soil samples we collected in order to determine the distribution
of the devil’s bit scabious plants.
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