Winter Thistle

After several spring-like days, the weather was much more unsettled today with the worst of the cool and showery weather timed to coincide with a planned site visit to Swaddywell Quarry to see whether there was scope for carrying out management work to help boost populations of Dingy and Grizzled Skipper. The showers held off while we were walking round the site, and it was really good to be out with three other people who are also passionate about the site and its wildlife.

After we'd completed the tour, I headed off with R to look at a small area of open space at a recent housing development in Helpston, and together we came up with some ideas to make the rather boring area of grass and non-native shrubs more valuable for wildlife, including a mini-orchard which would eventually be under-planted with violets and primroses, native shrubs along the fence line, an arc of taller wildflower grassland round the south- and west-facing edges of the grass, and enriching the remaining areas of short grassland with low-growing pollinator species such as Bird's-foot-trefoil, Red Clover and Self-heal. A fairly hefty hail shower meant that we didn't hang around for long!

On the way home I dropped into Marholm Field to see how it was doing after a year without management. Although there's noticeably more scrub, the sheets of Primrose were impressive and there were plenty of Pyramidal Orchid plants. I was rather taken by this tremendously hairy Spear Thistle rosette.