An Assembly of Tiles: Part 3 - the White-tailed Bumblebee

Presentation of the bumblebee tile at the Wirral Farmers Market

The white-tailed bumble bee tile is dedicated to Wirral Farmers’ Market who have helped the park in so many ways over many years. The market helped via its Community Grant Fund in sponsoring the construction of composting bins in 2005. The bins have been repaired and the number of bays doubled and are still being used to produce a source of soil improver for allotment holders.

Anne Benson, chair of Wirral Farmers' Market, with the new compost bins in 2005

In 2014 the market sponsored 500 bluebell bulbs which were planted under the hazel in Brick Pit Coppice and most recently sponsored the Silver Jubilee gates. They also provide the essential gazebos and tables for our opening days as well as the tombola drum. The current Chair of Wirral Farmer’s market, Steve Niblock, helped the park with the layout of the 2006 promotional leaflet and with council funding of various projects including the brown tourist sign on the junction of Howell and Bebington Road.

Bluebell planting at Brick Pit Coppice in November 2014

The next Wirral Farmer’s Market is on Saturday 13th April, 9am - 12 noon, where many items of quality food can be purchased, and profits made are ploughed back into the New Ferry area.  New Ferry Butterfly Park will have a stall sowing seeds into freshly prepared newspaper pots made by your own hand to take away in a window ledge micro-propagator. It is a chance to pick up our new leaflets to distribute to friends and family and purchase some of our greeting cards based on the tile designs.

The Butterfly Park stall at Wirral Farmers' Market, sowing seeds

Simon, treasurer of Wirral’s Farmers Market is pictured above with the tile dedicated to the market, alongside the greeting card based on the tile with the dedication written on the back. Simon and his family helped with the planting of the bluebell bulbs back in 2014. The white-tailed bumble bee is distinctive in appearance. It has a black body, a pale-yellow collar, a yellow band on the second abdominal segment and, of course their white tail. The bees emerge early in spring and can be seen feeding on flowers right through to August. They nest underground in old rodent burrows, crevices in brickwork or bases of hedgerows. Colonies can reach up to 200 workers but in the autumn only the new queen hibernates to start the cycle anew in the spring.

Paul Loughnane

New Ferry Butterfly Park Reserve Manager

An Assembly of Tiles: Part 2 - the Broad-bodied Chaser Dragonfly

Caroline Lancelyn-Green at Poulton Hall with the Broad-Bodied Chaser tile

The broad-bodied chaser tile is the most detailed of all the tiles that Freya Levy has painted. Freya has patiently captured the wing vein pattern of this dragonfly in excellent detail. The tile is dedicated to Caroline Lancelyn Green of Poulton Hall, Bebington.

Caroline has been a long-term supporter of the park and was the guest of honour at the 2023 Opening Day wearing a theatrical butterfly themed scarf. Pictured below is Caroline being presented with a wild pear tree from Willaston stock, as a thank you for being the guest of honour to unveil a new noticeboard. Caroline hosts fund-raising open garden events for a range of charities, including one for Wirral Wildlife and New Ferry Butterfly Park. Do visit the garden open days at Poulton Hall. They are well worth several visits throughout the season as there is a succession of flowering plants. Come especially on the Wirral Wildlife and New Ferry Butterfly Park fundraiser event on Saturday 29th June at 2pm.

See the Poulton Hall web page www.poultonhall.co.uk closer to the day for details and to book tickets.

Presentation of a wild pear tree to Caroline at the 2023 Butterfly Park Open Day

 
Caroline does much for nature conservation at Poulton Hall including the wildflower meadow beyond the ha-ha. It is a haven for the meadow brown butterflies which are on the wing even in light rain. Cheshire Wildlife Trust lease Tom’s Paddock, Foxes Wood, Thornton Wood, and Intake Wood from the Poulton Hall Estates and manage these sites for nature conservation.

Male Broad-Bodied Chaser dragonfly

The Broad-Bodied Chaser is an easily recognised dragonfly with is distinctive, broad, flattened body, which has yellow patches on the side of its abdomen. Painted on the tile is the male which has a blue abdomen. It is on the wing in June and July. Egg laying occurs by the female dipping her abdomen over shallow water at the muddy edge of the pond. The chaser has a marked preference for new ponds, so hopefully will continue to make use of the newly restored pond at the park. They patrol ponds regularly, returning to the same low perch after swift flights along the pond margins, so they can easily be observed.

Paul Loughnane

New Ferry Butterfly Park Reserve Manager

Hoylake Beach Management Consultation

Wirral Council is undertaking a Have Your Say consultation on Hoylake Beach. The purpose of the consultation is to seek views from residents and the wider community on their preferred management option for Hoylake Beach. The management options for consultation have been developed based on the initial consultation undertaken from June to August 2022.

The consultation is open until 25th March 2024 and can be found here:
https://haveyoursay.wirral.gov.uk/hoylake-beach-management-plan

The outputs from the consultation will be used to identify a preferred management option for Hoylake Beach and will be taken forward for political approval via Wirral Council’s Environment, Climate Emergency and Transport Committee in spring 2024. A preferred option will then be submitted to Natural England for their consideration, as the beach is internationally important, being a Site of Special Scientific Interest, Special Protection Area for birds and a Ramsar site.

Option 1: Access for All

Option 2: Amenity Beach

There are details of both options on the Hoylake Beach Management Plan website.

Wirral Wildlife committee feel that the best option for wildlife of the beach would be not to have any clearance at all of the naturally developing vegetation as it will remove important habitat. However, if clearance is needed for the RNLI operations, this should be the minimum area possible. Option 1 would be better than Option 2 as that involves least clearance but we would still have concerns about the damage this would cause to this rare habitat. The cost of yearly operations to achieve this outcome is another consideration. These are the points we will make in our submission.

We would encourage you to submit any comments you may have regarding this phase of consultation to hoylakebeach@wirral.gov.uk by 25th March 2024. More information regarding Hoylake Beach and the consultation process can be found here:
https://haveyoursay.wirral.gov.uk/hoylake-beach-management-plan

Ron's Rotary Club Award

Ron Warne (on right in Christmas jumper)
after being given his award from the Rotary Club

We are very pleased to congratulate Ron Warne for his recent award from The Rotary Club of Birkenhead.

Ron was awarded the Sam Lamour Award for Developing Youth. This is because he has quietly worked to ensure that the world young people will inherit will be a good physical environment. He has provided support for the amazing fundraising by Woodchurch High School pupils, by identifying a system whereby funds raised can be shared amongst voluntary groups that aim to improve Wirral's environment.

Ron was a recorder with Wirral Wildlife for some years, recording small mammals and plants. It is due to his good offices that Wirral Wildlife has received generous funding from Woodchurch High School's fundraising activities, for heathland restoration work at Cleaver Heath. Also New Ferry Butterfly Park has received funding towards a new large barrow.

An Assembly of Tiles: Part 1 - the Comma Butterfly

Tile in progress showing Freya Levy's painting of a comma butterfly

Neil Glendinning, a ceramic artist based at the Canal Warehouse Workshops, Chester, and Freya Levy,  a local artist from Birkenhead, have collaborated together to create six bespoke decorative tiles for the brick pillars supporting the Silver Jubilee Gates at New Ferry Butterfly Park.

The painting of the tile nears completion

Freya painted the tiles at the workshop periodically from May until September. She worked on several images with some designs not making it, such as a railway tile and some butterfly species including the gatekeeper, the small copper, the brimstone, and the burnet moth, as these did not fit in aesthetically with the gates and pillars. Neil coached Freya about the colours as they do change once baked.

Neil Glendinning with the completed tiles

The completed art works were glazed, and the tiles baked at 1250oC in a kiln to vitrify them into stoneware, making them waterproof and sun resistant. Each tile is dedicated to a person or group. In a series of small blogs each dedication will be explored, starting off at home base.

The Comma Butterfly tile is dedicated to the Wirral Wildlife group who support the park. This tile remembers the Comma (community art) Project of 2012. The original art concept of the butterfly was by Carol Ramsay and is the logo for the park and the comma logo can be found on the wardens' clothing. It is the butterfly on the gates. Pictured are Stephen Ross and Linda Higginbottom of Wirral Wildlife committee with the tile dedicated to Wirral Wildlife.

Stephen Ross and Linda Higginbottom with the tile dedicated to Wirral Wildlife.
Note the comma butterfly on the Butterfly Park T-shirt and fleece!

Stephen Ross, chair of Wirral Wildlife entertains the guest of honour on our opening day and promotes the park whenever he can. Stephen suggested that the butterfly committee should apply to the Duchy of Lancaster for £5,000 funding for the gates. The application was successful and enabled the gates to go ahead. Linda Higginbottom, Wirral Wildlife Publicity Officer, amongst many other projects organises the warden rota for the summer Sunday afternoon openings and assembles teams to host group visits. Linda designed the logos for the New Ferry Butterfly Park wardens branded T-shirts and sweatshirts. Linda is a great communicator, running the Wirral Wildlife Blog, sending out regular Wirral Wildlife emails and hosting the Facebook page of New Ferry Butterfly Park and Wirral Wildlife. Wirral Wildlife group host an impressive plant sale on the park’s opening day each season and from there on after nearly to the end of the season. This plant stall is another attraction for the Sunday visitors. Recently Wirral Wildlife have started hosting apple days at the park too.

The Comma butterfly has distinctive ragged wing edges which camouflage it. At rest it looks just like a dead leaf! The Comma can be seen at any time of the year, occasionally awakening on warm winter days.The butterfly emerges from hibernation in March, giving rise to the next generation which appears at the end of June and start of July. The majority of the offspring have dark undersides, and these go on to hibernate. However, the remainder of the offspring have quite light undersides and brighter uppersides, and are known as the form hutchinsoni. This form is named after Emma Hutchinson who discovered that this form goes on to breed and produce another generation that then overwinter. As a result, there is another emergence of fresh adults in late summer. The food plants of the caterpillars are nettles, elm and hop which are all present at the park.

Paul Loughnane

New Ferry Butterfly Park Reserve Manager

Autumn/Winter Activity at Cleaver Heath (2023/24)

In October the volunteers cleared grass, bramble and bracken which was growing in an area of sloping heath that was cut close to ground level in 2022 as part of a long term plan to increase the age range of heather across the reserve by rotational cutting of specific areas over a twenty year period. This unwanted vegetation was threatening to outgrow and shade out the small regenerating heather plants.

Clearing grass, bramble and bracken

Managing the heathland to create space for regenerating heather plants

During this work some interesting insects were observed in the thin surface soil and leaf litter. Several parasitoid ichneumon wasps were possibly looking for moth pupae to lay their eggs in and the very characteristically shaped bishop's mitre shield bug was running at the base of some grass tussocks. This bug has been previously recorded in several coastal dune locations across Wirral in recent years.

Ichneumon sarcitorius - female

Bishop's mitre shield bug (Aelia acuminata)

During November and December we worked hard on a range of tasks despite some very wet and cold weather. Overly tall birch was coppiced in the 'managed scrub' area to provide improved habitat conditions for nesting birds and, working with Graham from Cheshire Wildlife Trust, we removed and stump treated a section of unwanted tall birch and gorse from within the central heather panel. While dragging away cut birch, one of our volunteers observed an empty cocoon of an emperor moth attached to a small oak sapling, hopefully we will see some adult moths flying in the reserve in Spring.

The empty cocoon of an emperor moth found at Cleaver Heath

Some interesting fungi were also observed at this time, thriving during the very wet conditions.

Clockwise from top left: birch polypore, common earthball on the woodland floor,
turkey-tail fungus and oyster mushroom.

Tiny bonnet mushrooms on dead bramble stem - Mycena sp. ?

More wet and cold task days in December and January saw us carrying out widening of some narrow overgrown sections of the public access pathways close to the main entrance. We also continued to cut back vegetation that had overgrown through the iron railings onto Oldfield Road.

Widening a narrow section of the path

Cutting back vegetation that had grown through the railings onto Oldfield Road

During January and February, working with Graham from CWT, we cleared and stump treated invasive birch within the lower sloping heath and cut back and dug out many of the roots of a very large rhododendron that was growing within the woodland area.

The planned contractor-led heathland regeneration project should be going ahead shortly and we will be topping up the recently widened public paths with stone in March so plenty to do in hopefully much improved weather conditions as Spring approaches.


John McGaw
Volunteer Warden Cleaver Heath