Autumn at Cleaver Heath

Signs of Autumn

The Swallows based at Oldfield Farm have already begun their annual travels south. Without fail they arrive in the second week in April and leave in the last week of September. This year there were 4 still feeding vigorously around the Farm and the Reserve on September 24th. On the morning of the 28th, they were circling very high over the Farm and by the afternoon, they were gone. We miss their chattering and that of their neighbours, the House Martins who departed a bit earlier. The Martins started a new nest this year in my neighbours’ eaves. I watched them from my kitchen window from 22nd May to 26th August.

On Sunday 24th September my colleague and I were conducting our last butterfly transect survey of the year and were delighted to see a ‘first winter’ juvenile Wheatear. To our knowledge, this is the first Wheatear observed on Cleaver. My colleague had already seen it during one of our regular conservation work sessions on that Sunday morning. It seemed to be finding food all along the main path. It somewhat delayed our butterfly walk.

I heard my last Chiffchaff singing on 26th September. I presume it was a juvenile just practicing. My Common Bird Census results suggested there were a total of 6 Chiffchaff territories being held on Cleaver at some point or another. This compares with 5 for the Willow Warbler and 8 for the Wren!

Butterflies

Our 26 weeks of Butterfly surveys were complete at the end of September. The totals were these:

Speckled wood	131	Peacock	11
Meadow brown	102	Holly blue	10
Small white	77	Small skipper	9
Comma	67	Small tortoiseshell	6
Red admiral	48	Painted lady	3
Gatekeeper	38	Brimstone	2
Green-veined white	32	Small copper	1
Orange tip	25	Common blue	1
Large white	21	Ringlet	1

Since this was the first year of the ‘Cleaver Heath UKBMS transect’, we have no benchmark with which to compare. UKBMS is the UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme. There were 18 species, none of which were unusual. Overall, it was said to be a disappointing year nationally. We are already looking forward to next year’s findings. It is quite exciting to go on the ‘hunt’ each week. You never know what will be around on the next section of the walk. There are 9 sections from the ex-carpark area in the Reserve through Oldfield Farm, past the Dungeon Wood, over to Thurstaston Church, each with a different habitat. Less enjoyable has been the worrisome weekly look at the 7 day forecast to guess which day will have no rain, decent sunshine, decent temperature and little wind and is on a day when at least one of us, but preferably both, are free!

The last butterflies to be seen in numbers were the Speckled Woods which are on the wing though most of the 26 weeks and the Red Admiral and Comma (above) which really like the late flowers of things like the Ivy. I saw a Red Admiral in our heath on October 17th.

Conservation work

Autumn means the start of serious conservation work on the Reserve. The first monthly volunteer working party day was on September 3. By the second, on October 1 we were well into our usual ‘birch control’ work in the northern heather panel. What was different this year was the use of the Tree Poppers and stump treatment made possible by the Natural Futures Project grant (see the ‘Early Summer on Cleaver’ newsletter). Each year, we work systematically through the Heather and Western Gorse panels cutting less desirable stuff such as Birch, Bramble and Bracken. We hope our new strategy of either pulling or cutting and immediately stump treating the Birch will reduce this annual chore somewhat. Following the annual bracken spraying with the relevant herbicide, we are repeating last year’s last scale effort of removing the bracken litter from areas which we hope to restore to heathland in due course.

Kevin Feehey’s group of trainee volunteers (pictured below) have spent a couple of days working on the bracken, coppicing aging gorse and generally enjoying being at Cleaver.

We recently had a visit by the regional Natural England representative responsible for heathland sites. Since Cleaver Heath, along with the Heswall Dales, has SSSI status (Site of Special Scientific Interest) the owners, Cheshire Wildlife Trust, have the legal duty to maintain this status in line with the requirements specified by Natural England. I am pleased to report that we were given much encouragement and good advice in our current efforts to look after our small site.

One aspect of the Reserve that perhaps needs more attention concerns not the site itself but the SW border along Oldfield Drive where the ownership of the verge has never been definitively established. Council ownership only extends as far as the Greenfield Lane junction.

There has been quite a bit of garden waste dumping not only on the verge but, more worryingly for the Trust, over the railings into the Reserve. This picture, looking into the Reserve, shows not only evidence of recent garden waste dumping but also, on closer inspection of the railings, the remains of the second of two polite notices requesting ‘NO DUMPING’. We hope at some stage to get cooperation from local residents to help monitor this and to maintain the verges in a manner acceptable both to the Trust and to our local neighbours.

Good waste and bad waste

Most, but not all, of our regular dog walkers on the reserve are responsible in bagging and removing waste produced by their animals. However, some seem to make an early morning trip to the reserve with the specific purpose of having the dog relieve itself before being bundled back in the car. I do a dog poop walk every Sunday morning picking waste up from the paths, the accessible woodlands and the nearby heather and grass panels. The typical weekly count is around 10-15 but my record is 24 ‘deposits’. Luckily, I also come across animal waste that I am very happy to see.

The photos show examples of dog muck and badger droppings. Can you tell which is which? Smell is the quickest way to distinguish them! Dog stools have a pretty rank smell while badger ones are slightly sweet and musty. They are often dark green but the consistency and colour depends on what the most recent diet has been. If you poke a stick into a reasonably fresh one and sniff the stick you will be pleasantly surprised … or repulsed if it was a dog one! Fox ones have that characteristic foxy smell and often look like a small coil with a tapered and curved end. I am pleased to say that the Reserve paths show quite a lot of recent badger activity. At least one comes through my back hedge, goes round by my wildlife mini-pond on the patio where it is sometimes videoed by my trail camera then goes down across the road into the Reserve.

We have recently had a little bit of storm damage as often happens in the autumn gales. Strong winds from the south caught many trees still in full leaf from an unusual direction. Fortunately all is now quiet again as the following ‘calm after the storm’ photo at Cleaver shows.

Alan Irving, October 2017