Summary of 2020 on the Lingfield Nature Reserves
This year has been an exciting year for the Lingfield Nature Reserves and we want to reflect on all that has happened and look forward to 2021. Not only was it a landmark year, 25 years after the reserves were created, but a great deal has been achieved.
This really started in 2019 with Councillor Jeremy Pursehouse of TDC adopting the reserves as one of his charities and the Co-op accepting us as a local cause. We also received a generous donation from Mike Potts who owns S4B Group, a local storage company. Our success in fundraising has meant that we have been able to undertake a number of projects more of which below.
Our efforts and the flourishing wildlife have also been noticed and we have had visits to see what we are doing from our local MP Claire Coutinho, BBC Surrey and the Caterham and District Independent. The Lingfield Library donated plants from their new wildflower garden.
Perhaps our most exciting happening was our recent hedge planting where over 40 people attended and got digging. It was heartening to see babies, toddlers, children, teenagers and recent graduates among a variety of new faces alongside our dependable and loyal regulars. Five newcomers have been added to our volunteer circulation list including a young man with a degree in biomedical sciences and a lady undertaking a qualification in conservation. It all bodes well for the future.
We also now have a twitter account: @AreaWildlife and a Facebook group, Lingfield Nature Reserve, where we will try to keep anyone interested updated with news on wildlife sightings on the reserves.
Two projects which began in 2019 but progressed well this year are the pond in the Butterfly Garden and the meadow experiment in the Quiet Garden. The pond was made possible with the help of Councillor Lesley Steeds who found some funding for us. It has been planted with a variety of native pond and wetland plants and is all set for next Spring when we will hopefully spot some amphibians using it. We have already seen a grass snakes, egg laying dragonflies and great diving beetles. The little wildflower meadow next door had the top soil removed and was seeded and planted in 2019. This year has been one of seed germination and establishment. So far it has exceeded expectations and over 50 species of wildflower have been counted in its modest 50 square metres. Next year we will hopefully be treated to a host insects and butterflies as it flowers for the first time.
Another, less well known, initiative is our tree and wildflower nursery in the allotment. The Parish Council has kindly allowed us to use half a plot. The Leahy Family have volunteered to look after it and their teenage daughter Mia has produced a wonderful design which includes a pond, compost heap, tree nursery, wild flower section, bug hotel and cottage garden among other things. In a couple of years we hope to be planting out home grown wildflowers in the reserve and maybe offering them to anyone who is interested in wildflower gardening. It is early days but watch this space.
Sadly one of our stalwarts and long time committee member Richard Lowe passed away last year. In his memory, a dutch elm disease resistant hybrid elm was sourced by Richard Stephens. His widow, Julia, and their family planted the tree on the Eastern edge of Coldharbour Copse (it is doing very well). We also planted another four different types of resistant elm donated by the Surrey branch of Butterfly Conservation. We know we have white letter hairstreak butterflies on the reserve and now they have more food plants (they feed on elms) and can spread across the reserve.
A project which is easy to miss but should be more noticeable in Spring is our work in Coldharbour Copse. Roger Ohlson and his son Danny carried out some coppicing and pollarding to let more light into this wood last Winter. The idea is to increase the woodland flora (it was a paddock full of just grass once). After Roger and Danny had finished their work, we sowed those areas with the seed of woodland wildflowers. This appears to be working well and red campion, wild foxglove, nettle leaved bellflower and wood sage have appeared. Hopefully many more species will germinate and they should provide a colourful show in the Spring along with the bluebells we have been seeding into the copse for many years now.
Our decision to fence all our ponds was a difficult one. It is a shame to reduce the openness of these habitats but, hopefully, the house martens will continue to visit to collect mud for their nests and the odd, early morning, little egret will hunt in the shallows again. Efforts to talk to people and putting up signs did not reduce the dog traffic which had stopped the ponds from clearing and prevented us from establishing egg laying plants for amphibians. We know frogs, toads and newts visit the ponds. Now the daily disturbance has reduced, the ponds should become clearer and the activities of the wildlife be more visible. We plan to carry out torch surveys after dark in the New Year to monitor the numbers of great crested newts and other amphibians in these ponds and are considering having supervised open mornings in the Spring so anyone interested can explore.
Our biggest project, of course is the new hedge, ditch and bank in Bloomers Field where 500 mostly blackthorn and hawthorn trees were planted. We hope it will become an exciting new wildlife habitat. Building on our successes with the now wildflower-rich ditches around the reserve (have you spotted the spreading orchids?), the bare soil has been seeded and planted with the aim of creating a nectar corridor across the field. Many of you will be familiar with the beauty of blackthorn and hawthorn hedges when they flower. They are also magnets for insects of all kinds and should help our declining solitary bee populations and provide an egg laying opportunity for brown hairstreak butterflies. We hope the base of the hedge will act as a beetle bank and also encourage insects like crickets and grasshoppers while the damp areas of the ditch will attract amphibians and be colonised by moisture loving plants like meadowsweet and water mint. To see what impact the hedge has as it establishes, we plan to record the butterflies seen along it as we can then compare any butterfly counts with our 20 years of records for other stretches of Bloomers Field. That should tell us how well it is working in attracting these wonderful insects.
Which brings us to the wildlife. How is it doing?
The group of animals we know the most about is butterflies. We have been monitoring them now since 2002. The good news is that despite Lockdown curtailing our surveys and against a background of nationwide declines, most butterfly species on the reserve did well and some showed continued increases in 2020. Small copper, brown argus, ringlet, brown hairstreak and clouded yellow seem to have had their best year ever. Dingy skipper, common blue, small/essex skipper and meadow brown
are all showing sustained higher numbers which correlates with our programme of digging ditches and seeding wildflowers which started about 10 years ago. Especially exciting, the small heath, which is a species of conservation concern, has colonised over the last couple of years. As butterflies are good indicators of the health of the environment we can assume other insects are doing equally well. This is all good news.
We have had other interesting sightings and reports: kingfishers, yellowhammers, hobbies, wasp spiders and many more. It is not unusual to see buzzard, red kite, sparrowhawk and kestrel in the space of twenty minutes on the reserve if you keep your eyes open. It is wonderful we have so much on our doorstep.
I would like to finish here on the subject of an obscure moth, the grass rivulet. This moth has been found on the reserve for the first time recently. Its significance is that it feeds on yellow rattle a plant which did not exist on the reserves twenty years ago before we introduced it. Yellow rattle is a wonderful nectar source and parasitises coarse grasses suppressing them and allowing wild flowers to compete. It is now ubiquitous across the reserve. So grass rivulet being present on the reserve is a direct result of our management which is a lovely illustration of how we are returning biodiversity to the reserves.
We would also like to mention here that we are considering offering free guided walks around the reserves starting sometime in the New Year. The idea is to identify any birds, wildflowers, butterflies or other wildlife that are seen during the walk and to explain what we are doing and have achieved with regard to increasing biodiversity. It would be on a week day morning when the reserves are quieter and involve a deliberately small group of around a half dozen. Booking would be on a first come first serve basis and aim to make the experience as inclusive for all levels of knowledge and interest as possible. All that would be required is a passion for nature. We would love to hear what you think so please feedback to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. if you think it is a good idea and might be interested.
We have a lot to celebrate and are making great strides in making our reserves as wildlife rich as we can. You are all aware that there have been catastrophic declines in wildlife in this country since the middle of the last century and they show no signs of reversing. We hope with your support the reserves can become a showcase for what can be achieved for wildlife with community managed public land. Maybe it will also give thought to others who own or manage land to start changing and do more for our struggling wildlife.
And what of the future on the reserves? Perhaps one of the starkest statistics is the loss of wild flower rich meadows in the UK. It is estimated that 97% has been lost since the War through agricultural improvement. Meanwhile 50% of our ponds have been filled in and most that survive are in poor condition. That is an almost unimaginable loss of flowers, insects, fungi, reptiles, amphibians, mammals, birds and all the other life forms those flower rich and wetland habitats supported. We plan to continue trying to make our reserves as florally rich as possible to try to bring as much of that back as we are able to.
J.Madden Dec 2020
2019 Thank you Jeremy Pursehouse
THE LINGFIELD NATURE RESERVES ARE 25 YEARS OLD….WHAT’S NEXT!
The planning and planting of our wonderful reserves began in 1994, 25 years ago this year. Then the fields were horse pastures surrounded by barb wire fences with little obvious biodiversity.
So much has been achieved since then. Nearly everything you see today has been planted or constructed since. We have a safe all-weather route to school from Saxby’s Lane from Vicarage Road. There is a bridge, an orchard, a butterfly garden, ponds, a wetland complex of ditches and scrapes, flower rich meadows, scrub, hedges and woodlands plus benches, seats and arbours.
Recently we have been presented with a new but very nice challenge. Councillor Jeremy Pursehouse, newly elected chairman of Tandridge District Council, has chosen our reserves to be one of two causes for his fundraising efforts for 2019-2020. That means we need to decide on and plan some new projects for the reserves so we can use any money we raise or are given as a result of Jeremy’s support. It seems we have a potential opportunity to do even more to improve the reserves for wildlife.
Jeremy’s other chosen cause is Blanchman's Farm, a Local Nature Reserve in the heart of Warlingham. We have already met with members of the Blanchman Farm management committee and it is clear that, as a minimum, we can share our different experiences in managing a nature reserve near the centre of a village and, hopefully, help each other to make our reserves the best they can be as an asset for our respective communities.
Whilst writing we would like to acknowledge the huge contribution made to the management of the reserves by our current treasurer, Sally Cole, who will be shortly moving to Devon with John, her husband, to live nearer their family. Sally has done so much for the reserves from being a stalwart at our Sunday morning work parties to doing a thousand and one management jobs. She is a real doer and go to person and has done everything from liaising with our mowing contractors to leading numerous pond dipping sessions with all sorts of local children’s and school groups. We are very grateful to Sally for her tireless work for the reserves. We will miss her very much and send our best wishes to her and John in their new life in the West Country after 40 years in Lingfield.
2018 Photography ProjectAll Photography Project Entries
New Pond (January 2017)
Excellent progress with the new pond
After only 16 months since it was excavated our new wildlife pond is developing well. You can see from the photos below how quickly the vegetation has established and spread. Most importantly we know that great crested and smooth newts have already found their way into the pond and are also breeding in the adjoining scrapes. Due to the very heavy dog traffic the pond is not clearing as hoped but with luck, as more vegetation establishes, this will happen and everyone will be able to see how the pond it is being colonized by all sorts of fascinating pondlife.
September 2015 September 2016 January 2017
Gatwick Airport Community Trust (added November 2016)
Thank you to Gatwick Airport Community Trust for giving us further funding in 2016. This money is being used for a number of exciting projects. In National Tree Week in November, volunteers will be planting a wildlife friendly hedge in the Quiet Garden. The trees in the hedge have been selected to provide food and shelter for birds and insects. They include a number of alder buckthorns which are the food plant of the beautiful brimstone butterfly. We hope to plant woodland wildflowers such as red campion, primrose and violets underneath to provide early Spring nectar. Our educational access area in Beacon Field has been enlarged by the construction of a mini outdoor classroom comprising a horseshoe of low benches on an all-weather hard standing. The GACT funding has also allowed us to consider how to encourage the bat population on the reserves and to this end we have used the grant to purchase a bat hibernaculum which now hangs in a large oak tree in Jenners Field. We know there are bats in this area and we are keeping our fingers crossed that a colony will soon be spending the Winter is this specially designed bat box. Finally, we are delighted to say that the GACT grant has allowed us to repair and resurface the paths which form part of the Safe Route to Schools through the Reserves. They now look splendid and have been returned to a standard which provides a firm and level surface for wheel chairs and buggies. Thank you again Gatwick Airport Community Trust for making all these wonderful projects possible.
Short -toed Eagle (added June 2014)
The local area has been playing host to a very rare bird for the last couple of weeks - a Short-toed Eagle. This is a pretty big bird - wing-span around 5ft or so - which is more usually seen in SW and E Europe... This being only the 3rd recording of the species in the UK (assuming eventual acceptance of the record) They over-winter in Africa and then migrate northwards into their breeding areas, and thought is that this is a young bird (2nd calender-year) which has overshot its usual area due to inexperience and ended up in the UK... what makes it a rare sighting is that many eagles prefer not to cross bodies of water if they can help it, so the English Channel would have presented something of a deterrent..
It's quite an interesting species, not least because of its diet, which consists largely of snakes and lizards, which I guess explains why it has been making the heaths of southern England its home for these last several weeks - a good deal fewer Adders and Grass Snakes in Ashdown Forest than there once was! I went to see it on Mon 16th June, and it was seen to catch and eat 3 snakes that morning alone.
Identification of the species is often comparatively straightforward (for raptors - a notoriously difficult group!) due to its size, mainly pale underparts and its ability to hover (bit like a giant Kestrel) which all set it apart from most other potential confusion species.
It was first found in the heathland near Wareham in Dorset on 31st May, and stayed faithful to that site for just over a week, and then started on its travels as follows:
31/5 - 07/6 - Dorset
08/6 - 09/6 - New Forest in Hants
10/6 - Ashdown Forest in Sussex
11/6 - A number of uncorroborated sightings in Essex and Cambs
12/6 - 14/6 - Back to New Forest
15/6 - present - Ashdown Forest.
At time of writing (25th June) the bird seems to be getting restless again, and a couple of times in recent days has 'gone missing' from Ashdown, and (possibly) turned up again in New Forest on one day... This seeming willingness to treat much of SE England as its hunting territory is quite impressive, and has led to some people theorising that there may even be more than one bird, although analysis of feather patterns (and just sheer likelihood) would seem to suggest that a single bird, that considers commuting between Hants and Sussex to be a trivial undertaking, to be a much more likely explanation.
Sadly I wasn't able to get any photographs on the day I went (too distant and murky) but have a look here at some images of the bird - it's a stunner!
Nestbox Survey
Have just finished surveying and cleaning out the nest-boxes, and have to say that it wasn't a particularly good showing this year (ie the 2013 breeding season) The highlights are in the table below, but key features were:
- Many more boxes have gone missing. I imagine that quite a few have simply fallen apart in the wild weather that we seem to get these days, but also some of the missing ones were among the more robust, so something of a mystery as to what has happened to them. Particularly disappointing was that the one favoured by the Nuthatches (and afterwards, Yellow-necked Mice!) has vanished without trace.... I'll have to make a replacement!
- Had several boxes which were occupied, but rather tricky to tell by what species. In some cases, this was because I had left the cleaning-out a bit late, and the nest had deteriorated to a sodden mess, but the box which has been occupied by the Greater Spotted Woodpecker was interesting - it was stuffed to the brim with large clumps of chestnut leaves.... Can't really think of any bird that might have done that, so I wonder whether it has been used as a winter dray by squirrels? Of course, it may have been used by woodpeckers earlier in the year, but no evidence of that any more.
- Looks like the Treecreepers started to build a nest again in the orchard, but the nest was abandoned halfway. This may have been because one or more of the adults met a sticky end, or they just gave up on the idea of nesting altogether - remember how awful the weather was in spring 2013.
- On that same subject, I reckon that could well be another reason that so few boxes were used in 2013 - the weather was so bad that many birds didn't bother even trying, as they realised that there would be no food for any young, so it was a very poor year for birds like Blue and Great Tits. Mind you, it's an ill-wind, as they say, as it unexpectedly turned out to be a fantastic year for many butterfly species, and personally speaking, I reckon these 2 events are not unconnected. No baby Blue Tits to hoover up all of the caterpillars!!
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Chorus 2013 (added April 2013)
I thought I would have another go at running a dawn chorus walk around the reserve, so if you can't tell your Chiffchaffs from your Chaffinches, and would like to learn a little bit about identifying birds by their calls and songs, please come along and join me.
This will be Monday 6th May, starting off at 05:00 to meet at the Vicarage Road entrance.
It may prove necessary to limit numbers, so please e-mail me if you intend coming along so that I can keep some control of the group size.
Ray Baker - This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Pond Dipping 2013 (added March 2013)
Sunday March 10th saw our first scheduled pond-dip of 2013, and have to say that the frigid weather was not exactly conducive to what is more often a spring and summer activity, as we all shivered in temperatures of 3-4c and a bitter easterly breeze.
In the event, I think we were all pleasantly surprised by the number of 'customers' who turned up, and also by the fairly decent catch that we had - it really was rather cold.
The full results of the catch are on the 'surveys' page but the highlights were:-
Overall numbers of creatures caught were generally higher than our first pond-dipping session last year (1st April 2012) with the only significant decrease being of water fleas, where we had a massive catch of 200 last year, which rather skewed the overall total figures. Thinking back to 2012 though, I can recall that much of March had been warm dry and sunny, so spring would have felt very well advanced by 1st April - rather unlike the cold conditions that we have had through most of 2013. I would expect that we would see a big difference in some species by the next session in April 2013.
It was noticable that the catch from the upper pond still continues to outstrip that of the larger, main pond. There is still not very much by way of established vegetation on the main pond, and I also wonder whether it is simply easier for the creatures to just evade capture in the deeper water farther from the banks. Anyway, it will be interesting to see how this season progresses, now that we have detailed records from 2012 to act as a baseline.
Review of 2012 (added January 2013)
Any review of wildlife for 2012 really has to start with the weather, as it has been a funny old year! Easy to forget, but 2012 actually started off with very dry weather throughout the winter and into spring (remember the drought?) so it did appear that some bird species would enjoy a successful breeding season in the gentle conditions, and Robins and Blackbirds were reported to have successfully raised broods a bit earlier then usual.
But then, come April, it started to rain - and seemingly didn't stop for the rest of the spring and summer - and everything changed.
The first indication that things were amiss, was the non-arrival of the spring migrants birds, which spend the winter in Africa etc and come to the UK from April onwards to breed, but most of these species either didn't arrive at all, or very late, or in tiny numbers - it was the worst year for such birds in living memory! In the case of the reserve, one of our most common spring visitor - the Whitethroat - was completely absent, and other species such as Garden Warbler were much reduced in numbers compared to 2011. The nightingale that had spent 2011 in the reserve didn't return.
Even birds that are native to the UK and usually prolific breeders were having a hard time, as they are often dependent upon insect species to breed and provide food for their young. Blue Tits, for example, feed their young almost exclusively on caterpillars, and there is some evidence that nests were failing, as the adults were not able to find enough food, as the moths and butterflies were also having a hard time in the cold, wet weather.
A couple of the rarer birds that have been seen around the reserve in winter - the Linnet and Yellowhammer - were also largely absent during 2012. In the case of the Linnet, this is possibly due to the fact that most of the gorse clumps (a favoured environment) had been burnt out by vandals. In an effort to recreate this habitat, we have planted several new clumps of gorse, and the original ones have started to regenerate, so fingers crossed for the future.
It's not been all bad news for birds though, and the annual survey of our nest-boxes showed that we have most of them in use now, and had several new species using them - Treecreeper, Nuthatch and Greater Spotted Woodpecker - which are exactly the sort of birds that we had hoped to attract by providing the boxes. There have also been 2 new species recorded on the reserve - Tawny Owl, and (in 2013) Waxwing!!
It was also a very poor year for butterflies - with the weekly transect count yielding the lowest number of insects recorded in the last 10 years. It was not all bad news though, as some of the grassland species did well, particularly Meadow Browns, but the highlight of the year was the sighting of a rare Brown Hairstreak butterfly in the quiet garden in August. This is a very special species and it will be interesting to see if we can find them again in 2013. A worry is that they favour mature ash trees!
There is no great history of dragonfly recording in the reserve, but our interest was aroused by a visit by a local expert in 2011, and we have just started to record the species seen. Perhaps surprisingly, for a relatively small area with not much water, we have 13 different species on our 'list' to date, including some quite impressive species such as Emperor and Brown and Migrant Hawkers.
We had also had quite a few sightings of grass snakes, so in 2012 we tried to improve the habitat for this increasingly threatened species by providing compost heaps for winter shelter and breeding sites, and also putting down several strips of roofing-felt, which would provide shelter, but also help the snakes warm up quickly in the sunshine. By monitoring these strips, we have been able to find snakes of 3 different age groups, so definitive proof that they are breeding on the reserve. Another excellent sighting was of a common lizard - there is every chance that these had been present all along, but much easier to see if they are sitting up on some felt!
In 2011, we took the brave step of undertaking a major overhaul of the large pond - it was virtually dry at the time and was so choked with infill and vegetation as to be in danger of disappearing altogether. Very pleased to say that the work does appear to have been successful though, as we managed a full programme of our monthly pond-dipping sessions (we had sometimes had to cancel these in previous years due to lack of water) so it appears that our new, deeper pond holds the water a bit better - although having been such a wet year may well have helped in this regard!
Results from the dipping sessions are now being recorded, and so we are able to prove that numbers of creatures - including our flagship pond species, the Great Crested Newt - are re-colonising the new pond with alacrity, and the earthen banks that we have created around the ponds will hopefully be a valuable new environment for flowering plants.
During the course of the pond works, we also took the opportunity to create a couple of small 'scrapes' with the hope that we could encourage frogs to breed.... For some reason (possibly the large numbers of newts) frogs had always avoided our pond-complex previously, and we were delighted to hit the jackpot on the first year, with several clumps of spawn and at least some frogs surviving the tadpole stage and leaving the water as froglets in the summer.
In general habitat-work, we have undertaken re-laying of the hedge down the side of Jenner's field - this is beneficial to create a dense, thick hedge for nesting birds - the old hedge was getting very leggy, and also planted quite a few trees, shrubs and bushes. The gorse clumps have already been mentioned, and we have also planted quite a few fruiting plants, and an early highlight of 2013 has been a flock of Waxwings feeding on the fruits of our mature plants down by the pond. This is an important food-source for birds during the winter months, particularly in years like 2012, when cold wet weather during the pollination season has led to poor, or even non-existent production of many other fruits, seeds and berries - No acorns in 2012 for example!!
We have also planted thousands of spring-flowering bulbs in the orchard - this is with a view to providing some early nectar sources for bees and other insects, which are all doing badly in the countryside generally. It will be interesting to see how successful this is, as we may extend the scheme in subsequent years if it goes well.
We have significant plans for 2013 for further habitat improvements, so any help to manage this wonderful local resource would be much appreciated. Please come along to one of our work parties or contact one of the committee members, and you too can get involved in this very rewarding project.