Merry Christmas

Best wishes for a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Butterfly Park Spreads Its Wings

New Ferry Butterfly Park has had its most successful summer with 1,500 butterfly sightings and nearly 2,500 visitors.

Beneficial wildlife management is going to be extended further thanks to money donated from Wirral Friends of the Earth and a Voluntary and Community Action Wirral Grant. These funds went towards engaging a contractor to strip an area of rubble, suckering plum and snowberry between the park’s gates and the Bebington Aldi and for planting a boundary hedge alongside this area.

Local volunteers, plus a party of students from Liverpool John Moore University Conservation Society, planted 100 shrubs to establish a species rich hedge for bees and butterflies.

The planted species included caterpillar food plants: holly for holly blue butterflies, purging buckthorn for brimstone butterflies, wild privet as a great nectar source for summer butterflies and hawthorn for hedgerow robustness. New Ferry Butterfly Park now boasts over 400 metres of well-maintained wildlife rich hedgerow, which gives the park a countryside feel. The first steps have been taken here, to transform this derelict corner of New Ferry into a wildlife haven.

It is hoped to bring the rest of the area by the new hedge into meadow management in the future, meanwhile a colourful patch of cornfield annuals will be established in this disturbed area.

Paul Loughnane, Honorary Reserve Manager

The Beginning - 6th March 2013:

Volunteers cut larger suckering plum down and use a chipper to chip cut materials

Photo: Paul Loughnane

18th November 2013:

Scrubbed up area with suckering Plum regrowth and Snowberry

Photo: Hilary Ash

18th November 2013:

Digger in action removing roots of suckering Plum and Snowberry

Photo: Hilary Ash

Cleared and levelled area, exposed neighbours' fencing

Photo: Hilary Ash

8th December 2013:

Volunteers with planted hedgerow finishing off with the bark mulch produced at the park.

Photo: Paul Loughnane

8th December 2013:

Hard days hedge planting as the light fades.

Photo: Martyna Chrzczon

Wild About Christmas!

An event organised by Cheshire Wildlife Trust

Location:

Church Farm, Church Lane, Thurstaston, Wirral, CH61 0HW

Dates:

Saturday 7th and Sunday 8th December, 11 a.m. - 4 p.m.

Saturday 14th and Sunday 15th December, noon - 5 p.m.

Saturday 21st and Sunday 22nd December, noon - 5 .pm.

Come along to buy some Wildlife Trust Christmas gifts and make a clay reindeer.