Work party

Had our regular monthly Sunday workparty at the nature reserve today - and, as always, too busy organising people and making sure they were safe to get any interesting photos. This shows the lovely north-facing slope we call Anthill, which used to be the stronghold of our population of Duke of Burgundy butterfly. We saw our last one four years ago, during a period when many colonies in the UK went under, for reasons that are still not fully understood. This mosaic of scrub blocks, wide paths and grassy clearings is still good for other butterflies like Green Hairstreak and Grizzled Skipper and is superb for rare plants like Fly Orchid, Greater Butterfly Orchid, White Helleborine and Wood Vetch. Today we were cutting some of the blocks of scrub and mowing and raking the paths and clearings.