Cherry Plum Blossom Special

As the days lengthen it is noticeable the leaf buds of hedgerows around Wrenthorpe are also lengthening. Indeed some elderberry and hawthorn are starting to unfold their embryonic leaves. However, in places there are also fragmented outbursts of white flowers before any leaves have emerged, too early for blackthorn I wondered.

Therefore, after further research a return visit for a closer inspection revealed the sepals (just behind the petals) of the flower are blunt shaped and reflexed (curved backwards) suggesting it is cherry plum (see attached photos). The sepals of blackthorn are not bent backwards so hopefully case solved! Cherry plum is widely naturalised in the UK and attracts many insect pollinators including bees.

cherry plum blossom sepals

The hedges around our local field and garden boundaries are vital for our neighbourhood wildlife, especially for mammals, insects and nesting birds. Happily their importance is now more widely appreciated, and more wildlife hedges are again being planted.

cherry plum blossom flower
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A brief face-to-face meeting with insect royalty

On 27 January 2024 I spotted a large wasp possibly a queen common wasp which may have emerged early from hibernation (see photo). She was busy munching away at an old timber garden chair. This is strategically placed close to the back door. Handy to pop down a heavy shopping bag whilst searching for the house keys to hurriedly get indoors, especially when it is cold outside. Fortunately, this time I managed not to disturb her. Not that any of this was really stopping her from peeling off tiny wood shavings to mix with saliva to form a paper mâché like material ready to start making a brand-new nest.

This brief face to face meeting with insect royalty was at a most critical time. For at this stage the queen wasp is all alone until the first eggs hatch and develop into the first worker wasps, which take over foraging and nest building duties. The queen is then left to laying eggs for the remainder of her life until the colony dies later during the year. However, some eggs will eventually develop into next year’s queens. These will hibernate as adults during the winter ready to repeat the annual life cycle all over again.

Wasps only live for a brief time but they are well known for becoming the central characters of many summertime picnic horror stories. Therefore, they seldom generate rave reviews and quickly divide opinion if they do any good. However, research shows they are very useful pollinators, scavengers and help to control other insect pest numbers. Also, wasps are an important part of our natural ecosystems and I say this despite being stung by wasps on several occasions.

Queen Wasp
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Charles Edward Andrassy

It is with great sadness that I report the death of Eddie Andrassy who passed away in hospital last Thursday evening. Eddie had been a member of the Wakefield Naturalists’ Society for many years, (probably the longest serving member of us all at present) and was a close personal friend of mine and to many of our members. Heather and I became good friends with him when we joined the Society c.1983 and he struck me as a very good-natured man. Eddie served on the committee for many years and his last stint was as publicity officer where he put his talents as an artist to good use in producing posters which he then distributed around various hides. Eddie enjoyed his artwork immensely and he employed his skills freely to illustrate many of the society’s publications that were produced in the 80s and 90s. He created the Society logo of the great crested grebe which we have used for many years now on the programme cards and other publications.

Eddie was the last of the (in)famous team of Wakefield Nats members that used to visit Spurn Point a great deal and it was on one of these visits that Eddie, along with Dorothy Walls, Philip Harrison and David Proctor and Barry Spence (the then warden), found a Tengmalm’s owl at the point. For reasons never understood, it was suppressed and news never broke until it had gone leaving the four of them in an unenviable position for many years to come! Eddie had been a birdwatcher all his life and I remember him telling me of the time he went to Norfolk to see the first ever pair of collared doves to nest in Britain – no mean feat in the 50s!

In more recent years, Eddie turned more to his art as his mobility began to be less than it was and I followed his posts on Twitter for the past couple of years as he posted copies of his latest art creations. I have taken the liberty of reproducing some here so that we may all enjoy them one last time while thinking of a good friend that is no longer with us. Our thoughts go out to Eddie’s wife Shirley and the Andrassy family.

Black-tailed godwits by Eddie Andrassy

Black-tailed godwits by Eddie Andrassy

Fieldfare by Eddie Andrassy

Fieldfare by Eddie Andrassy

Sunrise over a wetland by Eddie Andrassy

Sunrise over a wetland by Eddie Andrassy

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An impressive family gathering of a botanical nature.

The faded and fallen blooms of summer, together with the current abundance of wayside seed and fruit suggests autumn is already upon us. However, on 4th September a visit to the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust nature reserve at Ledsham Bank revealed an impressive family gathering of a botanical nature adding to an amazing end of season floral spectacular.

Against a purple haze of devil’s bit scabious, the real stars of the show are the following three members of the gentian family.  The Autumn gentian has eyelash like ribbons extending across the entrance to the narrow trumpet shaped flowers. Yellow Wort has bright yellow flowers and is a valuable source for pollinators as demonstrated in the image.  Common centaury has small pink tubular flowers and a long history of use in traditional medicine.  The beauty of these flowers is best seen close-up, see attached images.

Autumn gentian

Autumn gentian

Common centaury

Common centaury

Ledsham Bank nature reserve is an area of permanent pasture over a steep bank of magnesian limestone.  A rich flora has developed on these grasslands through continuing traditional management and grazing regimes.  Sadly, there are few remaining similar areas in this part of the County.  Indeed, the Wildlife Trusts say the UK has lost 97% of its wildflower meadows since the 1930s, with every county across the UK continuing to lose familiar and treasured wildflower species.  The scale of the loss has left the remaining ancient wildflower rich meadows like Ledsham Bank fragmented, and the associated wildlife isolated at risk.  This demonstrates the importance of the work being done at Ledsham Bank by the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust and other organisations in developing nature recovery networks to restore and conserve our wildlife.

Yellow wort.

Yellow wort.

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Ledsham Vale flower walk

There’s nothing better than a walk with friends on a sunny morning and Ledsham Vale was looking fresh and beautiful with plenty of flowers and birdcall and a shiny new YWT sign by the entrance.  Coming along the narrow top path we saw pignut, greater celandine, crosswort, mouse-ear, thyme-leaved sandwort and a bright yellow patch of bulbous buttercup interspersed with rock rose and hawkweed.  The best flowers though are on the steep banking which I’m sure has got steeper as we’ve got older.  Southern marsh orchids were tucked into the grass alongside large patches of milkwort, scrambling up to the second hillock we found what we hoped for, the pasque flower, only the seed heads but the 5 flower heads indicates it is still very much there. Down onto the bottom path twayblade blended into the vegetation and not easy to photograph.  We are hoping for a return visit in late summer early autumn to see the three types of scabious ubiquitous to this ridge of limestone.

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Roach Lime Hills

For our last visit of the season the wildflower group re-visited Roach Lime Hills at Garforth.  We should have been at Ledsham vale to seek three kinds of scabious but decided the five young bullocks on the vale were too curious and distracting to make for a comfortable visit.

Roach is an easy walk from the main road, and we were able to find field scabious, small scabious, agrimony, clustered bellflower, carline thistle (pictured), a few clumps of autumn gentian although only half the size they should have been attributable, we assumed, to the very dry summer.

carline thistle

carline thistle

This picture of a gall in the stem of creeping thistle was spotted by two of our members and is the home of the fly Urophora cardui, which is one of the picture-winged flies.  Up to 10cm long, the galls gradually become brown and woody as they mature in late summer.  Each contains one or more larval chambers, and the larvae remain in the galls when the plant dies down in the autumn.  They pupate in the spring, but new adult flies cannot emerge until the galls start to rot and disintegrate.  They normally emerge in mid-summer and lay their eggs in the tips of young shoots.

gall of Urophora cardui on creeping thistle

gall of Urophora cardui on creeping thistle

 

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June Field Meeting – High Batts Nature Reserve

The June field meeting took us to the members only nature reserve, High Batts near Ripon. 12 of us convened for an amble round this amazing reserve, a new sight for all of us, and we meandered through woodland, meadow, damp areas and used hides overlooking ponds and rivers. Amongst the birds, we had multiple views of kingfisher, blackcap, whitethroat feeding young, grey heron and a female Mandarin duck with young. Common spotted orchids, yellow flag iris, vipers’ bugloss. burnet rose and scarlet pimpernel lined the paths and, despite the cool, overcast conditions, the insects were plentiful; banded demoiselle, common and blue-tailed damselfly, speckled wood, red cardinal beetle, and various species of hoverfly, including Volucella pucellens, were all recorded.

Wakefield Naturalists' members

Wakefield Naturalists’ members

Burnet Rose and common spotted orchid

Burnet Rose and common spotted orchid

Nature lovers looking at wet meadow

Studying the wetland area

Whitethroat

Whitethroat

Whitethroat with ghost moth

Whitethroat with ghost moth

Volucella pellucens

Volucella pellucens

cow parsley

cow parsley

High Batts is an exceptional reserve, tucked away off the beaten track and run privately, it really is a first-class place to visit and I can only imagine how many more species we would have seen had the weather been a little warmer and brighter. I can highly recommend the site and it is well worth the £11 (£15 for a family) membership fee for those wanting to experience the reserve.

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Field Meeting at Wintersett

Our May outing, although a little later in the month than usual, saw a small group of members walking around Wintersett reservoir today. Wintersett is best known for its bird life and is a very well watched patch and it didn’t disappoint. Although things were quietish, we had great views of Cetti’s warbler, blackcap and, in particular, sedge warbler. Plenty of reed buntings along the edges of the oilseed rape fields and small numbers of common terns over the lake were a bonus. There was a big hatching of damselfly, notably common blue and large red, though there were many teneral insects which made identification difficult. High overhead were good numbers of swifts, screaming loudly as they hawked insects, but undoubtedly, the star of the show was a pair of nuthatches that have nested in an old woodpecker nest hole in a crack willow not far from the main car park. They gave brilliant views as they came in to feed the well grown nestlings every few minutes, Tony Renshaw has sent some wonderful images from the walk.

common blue damselfly Sedge Warbler Yellow flag iris Nuthatch at the nest Nuthatch at the nest with chick

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Bluebells at Middleton Woods

As an urban park, Middleton is surprisingly well looked after and on Tuesday the wildflower group enjoyed a wonderful woodland walk through acres of native bluebells. It wasn’t our first choice as we were hoping to go to Bretton woods, but the complicated booking system was off-putting.

Bluebells at Middleton Woods

Bluebells at Middleton Woods

Middleton is the largest ancient woodland site in West Yorkshire – mainly oak, beech, hazel, and willow and birdsong fills the air although we were only able to distinguish great tit and blackcap.  A return visit was made today as I wanted to see the lower woods which were even more spectacular than the upper woods.  Alongside the small, natural lake in the middle of the park is the visitor centre and cafe; the lake has been tarmacked round for public use but is full of roach, tench and rudd with frogs, newts and toads; a real little oasis.  Urban parks have their benefits as the bluebell woods are very accessible for all abilities and best of all it was reasonably quiet.

Mallard ducklings

Mallard ducklings

 

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Wormstall Woods wild flowers

A warm, dullish morning for our first spring wildflower walk of the season; after two years of lockdown we really appreciated the companionship.  The path into the woods was dry and well-trod and our first treat was this delightful clump of goldilocks buttercups.  Much more profuse than remembered and obligingly alongside the path.  Harder to see was this lords and ladies amongst the grass.

Coming into the woodland the early dog violet and common dog violet were hard to spot as already the dried leaf litter was covered in grass and emerging greenery but we did manage to find quite a few, the bluebells were well advanced for mid April.

Along the path we saw clumps of wood anemones and a spurge laurel, neither spurge or laurel but a member of the Daphne family and highly poisonous particularly the berries.

Going through the gate and onto the banking there were a few red-tailed bumblebees nectaring on the ground ivy and celandine, the mix of blue and yellow beautiful in the late morning sunshine.

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