Spring 2025
It dawned on me today that I haven’t kept you up to date with how the site is looking as it has been a very busy year and quite distracting on a number of fronts.
We had to cancel a lot of the workparties this winter due to a catalogue of problems ranging from personal ill-health (nothing serious but I just seemed to be constantly knocked for 6 by heavy colds) and family commitments (my parents need more of my time to support them). Anyway, the good news is that BBOWT have offered to take over the organisation/running of the workparties for the coming year and we will see how that goes. They will publish the dates in their regular calendar of management work events and anyone can come along to them – but it means I can opt out and the event still goes ahead and Hartslock doesn’t miss out on much-needed habitat management.
I visited the site on 3rd April for a walk-round with the BBOWT managers and the Pasque Flowers were very good – lots of flowers and the colony seems to be spreading a bit further afield. We concluded that the site didn’t need a lot of work but we are likely to do a bit more scrub cutting in slope 3 and some step repairs in slope 2, with potentially a few steps on the orchid slope itself for the first time. The main path up the orchid slope is becoming more and more eroded and people are stepping to one side or the other to get good purchase up there. The solution is to turn the ruts into actual steps and then concentrate people into the already eroded place rather than encourage them to go up other paths.
Later, on the 30th April I went up after a tip-off on the “Wild Orchids of the UK” Facebook group saying that the orchids were in flower but that they hadn’t seen Lady Orchid or Monkey Orchid. Their visit had been a few days prior to mine by I was pleasantly surprised to see 2x Lady Orchids (though smaller than in previous years) and a single Monkey Orchid in full flower. Other Monkeys were in bud around the site, including a really nice chunky head of buds just below the lone beech tree, just into slope 4.
Around the site were plenty of Dingy Skipper, Grizzled Skipper, Green Hairstreak & Small Heath, along with Large White, Green-veined White, Peacock & Brimstone. I also saw a few Gymnocheta viridis down at the reserve entrance, on the welcome board.
