Our churchyard in AUGUST

My thanks to all those who volunteered and came along to cut and rake the grass at the beginning of August. We cut the grass to a level that will allow some cover for caterpillars to overwinter safely away from the gaze – and beaks – of birds and other predators: the hay has been put to good use to make hedgehog hibernacula at Black Ven farm.

Many people have commented on the low number of butterflies that they have seen this year. This is borne out by the early results of Butterfly Conservation’s Big Butterfly Count, where ‘citizen scientists’ spend 15 minutes counting butterflies in their gardens and reporting the number seen. Altogether, 81,164 ‘scientists’ recorded 936,185 butterflies in 131,339 counts.

The bad weather this year has led to a very low number of sightings: nearly 4 in 10 of these were of the Meadow Brown and Gatekeeper, with many other species in serious decline. The Gatekeeper is smaller and a brighter orange than the Meadow Brown: its flight season starts later and is considerably shorter. Both have been abundant in the churchyard this year. By the end of August, the Gatekeeper will be largely done, though you may still be able to see the Meadow Brown throughout September.

In the light of this background, it was particularly
pleasing to see both a Common Blue and a
Small Copper when we were cutting the grass.
The Blue butterflies in general appear to have
suffered most from the weather. Better still, it
became apparent that we have a large population of
grasshoppers and crickets in the meadow – many hundreds,
if not thousands, were jumping around in the grass as we
were cutting. Grasshoppers have short antennae, as seen
in the Lesser Marsh Grasshopper, whereas Bush Crickets
have long antennae. We welcome two new arrivals here.

The Roesel’s Bush Cricket is a handsome critter indeed, with a chestnut brown body, a black pronotum (the bit behind the head) with a lemon-yellow border, and more lemon-yellow spots along the sides of the body.

The Long-winged Cone-head by contrast is bright green, which makes it difficult to see against the grass. Both are quite shy. They will hide in the grass: but if you walk through on a sunny day, they are easy to spot as they jump.

Nigel Symington