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One of the things that many of naturalists mentioned as they visited he site was the lack of water. There are two ponds in the garden but nothing other than a ditch/stream and a boggy area on the farm. But, in fact, there was a pond it was just so overgrown and filled up that it would be difficult to call it a pond anymore…

To improve the range of habitats on the farm it was decided to enlarged the pond and clear the foliage. This was a natural pond in an area of clay, so the pond needed no lining, just a bit of digging out (two weeks work!).

Before and After

There is a near by stream/ditch formed from the runoff from the fields. It was initially thought that we would connect the stream to the pond but on reading the information provided by Freshwater Habitats Trust and their Million Ponds Project we realised that this might lead to excessive nutrients and contaminants in the pond and so the two were not connected.

Planting?
Once the pond was expanded it was tempting to introduce native plants. But factsheet 8 from the Million Ponds Project Toolkit suggests:

New ponds are used by a specific range of plant and animal species which either: (a) prefer open bare conditions to live in (b) need inorganic mud and sands to root into, or (c) do not compete well with other species. These ‘new pond’ plants and animals often disappear after a few years as ponds become more mature.

So we resisted…

Progress so far…
The Freshwater Habitats Trust were right, the plants have been quick to colonise below are two plants have found so far:

And the pond already looks more natural

As for animal life, the pond is teaming with little creatures for those that have the time to sit and stare…

This appeared early October about 10m across. Inside the ring were some smaller (as yet unidentified) fungi and alongside were some strange white (chalky) Fungi. We need an expert to tell us what is going on here…  We will Have to ask Nick Aplin back!

Possibly my favourite month.

Everything is mellow.

This year especially everything seems particularly laden with fruit, Hawthorn covered in haws, Chestnuts laden with developing nuts, Oaks laden with acorns and Blackberries are really plentiful.

Here are a few photos I took on two recent walks round the farm

Here are just some of the moths (and caddisfly) we found in the light traps this September:

Last night we spent a lovely couple of hours putting out moth traps and sugar solution ( a mix of molasses sugar, alcohol and fruit) onto tree stumps and painted onto cloth placed around the woods and garden. We were hoping to see lots of moths feeding  on the sugar mix… Well we found all sorts of invertebrates… But moths were not abundant. We saw one moth ( just the one ) which flew off before we could take a picture.

The overriding theme of the night however, was hornets. Surprise, surprise  hornets like sugar too! One of our sugar coated cloths obviously had attracted a number of invertebrates including a harvestman and earwig, but that is as much as I can tell you because the cloth seemed to be  defended by hornets.  We could not approach it without the hornets flying towards our light.

Having decided we had seen all we were likely to on the sugar we decided to take a quick look at the light traps we had set up around an hour earlier. The LED trap was working well, but the much brighter Robinson trap was, to our horror, full of hornets, at least 7 of them. Hornets in a trap will eat moths. So we decided to turn off the trap.

This morning we opened the Robinson moth trap with trepidation. It was still full of hornets…

We carefully removed the egg boxes from the trap putting the hornets away from us as we discovered them. Although the hornets were frightening to look at we were pleased to see that they ignored us. Despite the hornets we still had a good number of moths to record from the LED trap and even a couple of moths in the Robinson trap.

Later in the day we revisited the place the hornets had been protecting and discovered a hornet nest in an old gnarled silver birch. Which explained a lot.

Searching For Mammals

The Friday of our Bioblitz was a wet day, especially Friday evening. My good friends Emma Hawkes, Emily Harker (who are both licenced to trap small mammals) and Louise Brazier from The Gilbert White Field Studies Centre arrived about 6pm. We had intended to put out small mammal traps that evening, but heavy rain can create safety issues for any trapped mammals, so we decided to delay setting the traps until the weather improved. Martyn Phillis, had also been considering looking for bats but, understandably, decided to defer his visit (and was able to return a few days later).

Saturday morning, the rain had stopped. As I visited one of the moth traps two young deer dashed past me. Later from the cottage window I spied a small (unidentified) furry creature dart between plants in the rockery outside. I took this to be a good omen and Emma and I quickly put out the traps in likely looking places around the farm.

Emma visited the traps every 2 hours until around 4pm but the small mammals, if out, managed to avoid them all.

So by the end of our bioblitz, despite discovering so many other species, precisely what mammals we have at the farm remains a mystery.

I would like to say a big thank you to Emma, Emily and Louise for all their help during the bioblitz not just with small mammals, but for their abundance of enthusiasm, advice and practical support with moths and other species. Their contributions added so much to the event’s success.

My opinion of moths has gone from those annoying brown things that hang around lights, to an understanding that they represent an amazingly diverse species. The monitoring of which can give a real insight into the surrounding country side. Monitoring the moths at the farm will be of real value as the project continues.

I need to thank my good friend  Chris Piper who’s passion has inspired me to go as far as to make my own  moth trap. Chris puts on regular moth trapping sessions at the unique grounds at Gilbert White’s House and so if you would also like to be inspired then please go along and join him

Discovering the Moths of Selborne – Gilbert Whites House

Moths are sensitive indicators of the health of the natural environment and a vital part of the food chain; something which didn’t escape the attention of Gilbert White as early as the 18th Century. We are having a monthly series of moth events again this year during the most active part of the s

gilbertwhiteshouse.org.uk

Chris has been kind enough to put out traps a number of times on the farm and his data can be seen in our invertebrate data tables.

Here are some of the fantastic moths we have found:

Of all the amazing ecologists who have given their time to help us record the species on the site recently Scotty Dodd and Stephen Miles have helped us to understand the farm from a different perspective.

Scotty, from the outset has shaken our view of what is beneficial to biodiversity and made a fantastic figure laden with sweep nets and other equipment as he arrived at the bioblitz on the  20th July.

Scotty recorded 133 species:

[W]ith two Nationally Scarce species (both associated with dead-wood / old growth trees) and of course your wood ants which are globally Near Threatened and really should be notable in the UK as they are a keystone species for numerous other invertebrates, including a supporting cast of scarce and rare species.

For a full list of species check out our invertebrate data tables. As well as some really useful conversations around bracken management Scotty also made the following observations:

Key points are to keep removing nutrient load, e.g. grazing does this to some degree. Areas where grazing is not having desired effect will need some form of cut and collect management, i.e. remove arisings. Allowing islands of scrub to develop with the grassland will give you more of the mosaic feel that Amanda talked about, but islands will grow if not kept in check! Islands can also act as nurseries for future veteran trees – key open grown trees would be Pedunculate Oak and Beech, Sweet Chestnut should probably be discouraged? Not a true native species but does eventually make a nice parkland tree (see Greenwich Park, Petworth, Lodsworth etc). However the quality for invertebrates is questionable, certainly much poorer than oak.

Try and decide on indicator species to monitor your progress and assess which way your project is going. These might be presence/abundance of certain plants, butterflies, other insects etc.

The woodland needs a lot of work to remove Rhody, good luck! Once Rhody is suppressed you will be able to see the wood for the trees and decide if you need to do anything more. I suspect that it will still be quite a dark woodland so a bit of glade creation / maintaining present open areas would be beneficial. The real acid test here will be monitoring your wood ant population, nest size etc. Try and find that photo of when the big nest was active and assess what the woodland was like back then and aim for that! Key associated species to look for would be Scarce 7-spot Ladybird, Shining Guest Ant and Clytra quadripunctata. I choose these as they are easy to look for, pretty much everything else associated with the wood ants is hard to identify and/or requires sieving of the nest material when the ants are active.

Stephen Miles is interested in Bees and Wasps, we soon discovered we had no idea of the diversity of this species. Insects that we would previously have overlooked turned out to be bees!

Stephen’s key message was that unhealthy trees and rotting wood are vital for insect diversity. That is good as we have lots of rotting wood!

[As] we left the fields we observed two or more Lasioglossum species of bees in the yellow composite flowers (Hawkbits and Hawkeeds), one of which might have bee Lasioglossum minutissimum (Kirby) but I would have to kill it to be sure.

[ ]The garden was the star of the visit and it was attracting species out from the rest of the site. I was most impressed that [Linda] keeps it well tended and hoed. The species she grows were most attractive to many solitary bees, these included many mask bees of the genus Hylaeus. We also observed the bee, Anthophora bimaculata (Panzer) and males and females of the attractive yellow spotted Wool Carder Bee, Anthidium manicatum (L.) on various labiate flowers, a specimen of the solitary wasp, Cerceris rybyensis (L.) which preys on solitary bees of the genus Lasioglossum was present in the heather garden.

Again thank you to Scotty and Stephen for their invaluable help and advice.

Our Bioblitz was made  a great success by the many recorders and Natural history Groups whose representatives gave up their time to help record species on our land. Of all the groups the Sussex Botanical Recording Society (SBRS) had the most members present over the two days.

We are very much looking forward to having them visit us again in the near future.

Nick Sturt, chairman of the group very kindly sent us the following report:

Myrtle Farm 19 and 20 July 2019, Vascular Plant Species: a brief report

Sussex Botanical Recording Society

1. General

The site (in tetrad SU82D) is on undulating ground at the foot of the escarpment in Coldharbour Wood and comprises a variety of habitats, notably woodland, meadow including damp meadow, and ruderal. The intention is to manage the site outside the curtilage of the farmhouse as more or less one unit with a small herd of cattle roaming free along the lines of what is termed loosely as ‘re-wilding’. This baseline survey is necessarily incomplete, most significantly because Spring and early Summer species will have been missed.

2. Woodland

The range of species in the woodland is not great but it is considered that with suitable management this situation could be improved. Work to eradicate Rhododendron is already under way and will bear fruit in the form of many more opportunities for the development of greater biodiversity. The acidic conditions already support some typical plants such as Pill Sedge and Creeping Soft-grass and also a good range of Ferns (Lady, Male, Scaly Male, Broad Buckler). Further species typical of heathland could establish themselves in areas where the canopy is opened up. The mix of damper and drier conditions certainly has the potential to support a wider range of species of plants. Outside the woodland individual trees and the hedges are attractive and together make a most valuable contribution to biodiversity.

3. Meadows

Here again there is an attractive mix of damper and drier habitats. The former are characterised by such species as Sharp-flowered Rush and Oval Sedge with some Marsh Bedstraw, the latter by swathes of Common Bent which produce a most attractive pinkish blur at this time of year. There is already a good variety of plant species but management in the past has probably led to the meadows being less species rich than they could be. Grazing regimes should lead to greater variety in the future. Other species typical of acid grassland recorded include Tormentil and Heath Speedwell. The damp track linking the eastern field with the rest of the farm is interesting near the field entrance, eg Water Purslane and Marsh Cudweed. The verges of the main drive should also be mentioned here since they are well maintained and support a nice range of species, including Lady’s Bedstraw.

4. Ruderal

Some of the most interesting plant species on farms are often to be found on and around dung heaps but, alas, no such resource was seen on the visit! However, a good number of ruderal species were recorded around the outbuildings. The well-kept garden yielded a few weed species and the attractive lawn was far from being an unproductive monoculture, Trailing St.John’s-wort being the star wild plant. SBRS members appreciated the lovely garden.

5. Summary

The SBRS undertakes site surveys for both higher and lower plants. It is not the business of the Society to advise on management of sites but some guidance can be offered if requested.

As a general rule biodiversity increases with the number of different habitats, and, within those habitats, with the different management systems in place. There is certainly scope for creating limited areas of scrub: these will benefit birds and invertebrates in particular but should not be allowed to compromise the best areas of the meadows. Equally there is scope for more intensive grazing of some areas of meadow, and maintaining the more relaxed grazing regime in others. To some extent the stock will make their own choices but manipulation through (for example) temporary fencing (as is already in place in one damp meadow area) is recommended in order to experiment and fine tune. It is important to keep the nutrient levels low and thus any mowing should be followed up by removal of the cuttings; the same applies to concentrations of dung, though with low density grazing this should not be a problem. There do not appear to be any unwanted invasive species. Creation or restoration of ponds would boost biodiversity quickly.

Personally I am not in favour of the introduction of species as a first recourse: most often the plants will find their way into a habitat on their own. Some introductions could be considered after the first couple of years: these should be of native, preferably local, provenance and duly documented.

6. Ten Best Plants Noted

Athryrium filix-femina Lady Fern woodland

Carex pilulifera Pill Sedge more open woodland

Carex spicata Spiked Sedge eastern field

(plus ?C. muricata Prickly Sedge to be confirmed)

Galium verum Lady’s Bedstraw verge of main drive but could be elsewhere

Hypericum humifusum Trailing St.John’s-wort damp track from eastern field and in lawn

Hypericum pulchrum Elegant St.John’s-wort* woodland

Lythrum portula Water Purslane damp track from eastern field, and in lawn

Populus tremula Aspen

Schedonorus pratensis Meadow Fescue* meadow

Veronica officinalis Heath Speedwell eastern meadow