February 2024 Overview at Peel Park & the Coppice LNR

We have have been a lot busier on the Coppice this month thanks to the milder weather.

Brimstone Butterfly (photographed by Gemma McMullan)

During February half term, our very own TreeACTION project hosted a session on the site to plant a new Alder Buckthorn hedgerow to attract the Brimstone Butterfly. We also had help from the North Lancs Training Group hospitality team who volunteered their time to help us with the Alder Buckthorn and the leftover Hawthorn from last month. They even made the Lancashire Telegraph! A huge thank you to NLTG for all their hard work.

The Brimstone Butterfly is an unmistakable butterfly, with the males of the species sporting sulphur yellow scales that instantly brighten up the landscape in early spring. The females are a bit more modest, with their pale greenish-white wings, the average person may mistake them for a Large White or even a leaf! The butterfly is quite common down south but is becoming more common in the north of England. We are brimming with anticipation to see if the Brimstone will take to our new hedgerow and choose it to lay its eggs. The caterpillars can only feed on Alder Buckthorn & Buckthorn so they are essential to have if we hope to help the Brimstone population!

During the half term, we also held a litter pick walk from Arden Hall to Pleck Meadow where we collected 8 bags of litter! On the walk, we discovered some frog spawn in the new wetlands on Pleck Meadow, amazing news for this habitat. You can read more about the frog spawn at Pleck Meadow here.

And of course, we continued to clear scrub in the heathland to prevent woodland encroachment, ensuring that heath species like Heather and Bilberry have plenty of light and can continue to thrive. Lowland Heathland is a semi-natural habitat which requires intervention from humans and/or large animals to keep the soils nutrient poor and acidic. These conditions provide a unique habitat which benefits many wildflowers and pollinators. You can read more about the cultural and biological importance of heathland on the Wildlife Trust website. We have also been busy removing dominant Purple Moor Grass to give heath species more room to grow, not an easy feat as the grass's roots form rock hard mats which are difficult to dig up!

Scrub clearing on the heathland!

8 bags of litter!

NLTG in front of the Holly & Hawthorn hedgerow.

Alder Buckthorn for the Brimstone Butterfly.

Alder Buckthorn hedgerow along Pleck Meadow!

PROSPECTS set up the second monthly moth trap of 2024 up in Pleck Meadow and despite the cold weather we got 3 species! Most insects are not known to thrive in the winter time, however, there are a few moths like to stick around or emerge early before spring is underway.

We got a Satellite, Chestnut, and Dotted Border. It is the first time that Chestnut and Dotted Border have been officially recorded on the site. All of the following moths are invaluable pollinators for flowers that bloom from late autumn to early spring, a time when there are not a lot of other pollinators around. This means that they can also be food for winter birds when food is scarce. Their larvae also have a wide variety of food plants, making them useful herbivores.

Satellite (Eupsilia transversa) - Common - Fly from autumn to early spring. They are very easy to recognise from the two small dots that 'orbit' a larger dot on each of their forewing. The markings can be orange or white. Fascinatingly, the Satellite's larvae are known to be omnivorous! Once they have grown considerably, they will eat the larvae of other moth species that occupy the same plant as them.
Chestnut (Conistra vaccinii) - Common - Fly from autumn to early spring. They are small brown moths with varying patterns on their wings, but are easily distinguished by the time of year they fly and by the half kidney mark on their rounded forewing (although the half kidney mark can sometimes be absent.)
Dotted Border (Agriopis marginaria) - Common - Fly from early spring. Harder to distinguish from a distance, but on closer inspection the 'dotted border' of it's forewings make it unmistakeable. It can be confidently said that all the 4 Dotted Border we found are males as the female Dotted Border is flightless. It will wait on tree trunks during the early hours of the morning for a male to visit it, this will save her energy which she can put towards egg production instead!

Project Officer, Robert Gabryszak, will be continuing to set up the trap every month to track the progress of moths throughout the year. Public sessions will start in May when the trap is expected to be more full, but we will be opening a trap on Saturday 16th March before our spring clean of Pleck Meadow!

To express your interest, contact him at robert.gabryszak@prospectsfoundation.org.uk.