Brown and blue field

In the agricultural deserts that occupy much of eastern England, former quarries often provide havens for a wide range of flora and fauna. Much of my day was spent at two ex-quarry brownfield sites, both resplendent in shades of gold, browns and blues, marking the end of winter.

In the morning I was at Swaddywell, an ex-limestone quarry used for car-racing in the 1990s, to check on progress of some localised soil stripping to control invasive Wood Small-reed and improve the habitat for Grizzled Skipper, which is associated with a good population of Wild Strawberry on the site. 

In the afternoon Pete and I visited Pensfield NR, an ex-gravel working that was sold to the local Parish Council for £1. We carried out a rapid invertebrate and botanical assessment in the autumn, and provided some management advice. Today we spent three hours walking round with the management group, looking at options on the ground. The site has lots of potential, but unfortunately much of it has been 'landscaped' which mainly involved planting lots of trees. Some, particularly Alder and Willows are very invasive and are now threatening the more open wetland areas that support an interesting assemblage of stoneworts and pondweeds, including the Nationally Scarce Fen Pondweed. 

Between my two visits Chris popped over for coffee and stayed for a quick lunch, He's just returned from his delayed honeymoon in Jordan - he loved the country and said it was incredibly friendly and welcoming, and very easy to get around. I think they saw it at it's best - visitor numbers are still very depressed and they basically had Petra almost to themselves.