June 2024 Newsletter

As predicted, this has been a busy month with both training and summer events in full swing. On the training front Steve Goodwin’s ‘Introduction to Invertebrates’ training provided an in depth look at key invertebrate ‘orders’, and their features, followed by a practical ID session at Down Grange Meadow. This popular course is being re-run in September for those who missed the first one. This month’s ‘Nature Notes’ focuses on wildflowers, based on the ‘Introduction to Flora ID’ training the ever-popular field event run on a sunny Sunday morning in June by Martina Jones. Information on future training can be found at the end of the Newsletter.

A big thankyou to all those who have been involved in running our programme of summer events, so far. Hopefully some of you will be able to join us at the next big event, Old Down Bioblitz on 7^th July. This promises to be an exciting event with lots of wildlife surveys taking place throughout the day, stalls from organisations like RSPB and plenty of interesting activities/ information on the Old Down Wildlife Group stall.

By now all those who requested them have hard copy and digital versions of the NB recruitment posters. These have started to appear across the borough including in both Sainsbury’s (Hatch Warren) and Tesco (Chineham). We have also started to launch our ‘Random Acts of Wildness’ pledge campaign, encouraging people to commit to taking a personal action for (local) nature, hopefully some of you will be able to join in over the coming weeks.

This month we have contributions from the Overton Hill Group and HIWWT’s local Nature Watch Group. If you’d like to include something in a future newsletter, please contact me via the email address below.

Best wishes

Gill

Latest News

NB Groups/ Our ‘Green’ Partners

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NB Groups

Overton Hill Group (Holly Flanders)

On a sunny Sunday in June, during Green Week, I was dangerously close to filling my wellies with icy water, while kicking up stones and watching silt flow through clear water and into a net. Hovering behind me, a pair of children watched to see what I would come up with.

We’re very lucky in Overton, we have an area we call ‘Flashetts’, officially an SSSI. It is a wildlife rich, walkable stretch along the river Test, shaded by trees. Along it are a pair of stony beach-like areas, encouraging the public to engage with our chalk stream, and has always been very popular in the summer. This is not the first time this area has been used for river dipping, and it won’t be the last. Several of the children who came were already experts in river dipping!

We were specifically looking for river invertebrates, and found plenty of them! Various mayflies, including olives and blue wing olives, the wonderfully named Angler’s Curse, and a mayfly we could not identify on the day, but may be a spurwing or a summer mayfly. We also found plenty of freshwater shrimp, some worms, water, and riffle beetles, hoglice, many examples of cased caddis, and one, quite large, caseless caddis, possibly a grey flag, which we were very happy to find.

There were, of course, some fish sightings, including some young bullheads, stickleback, and a minnow. A family of ducklings floated down during the day, always a popular sight, no matter where in the village you are. All in all, a wonderful day, with many visitors, and many finds.

3rd Party News

Wildlife Watch (Clare Lloyd Williams – Volunteer Leader)

Wildlife Watch is the junior branch of the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust (HIWWT). There are currently 5 Watch groups across the county including the Basingstoke branch. Watch is aimed at 5-15 year olds, and we hold an event almost every month in and around the local area. Led by volunteer leaders, past events have included practical coppicing work in Oakley, bats at Southington, bug hunting in Silchester, and birds in Eastrop Park. Natural Basingstoke (NB) kindly advertise our meetings and we use a number of the NB partner organisations and sites for some of our events. Our next session is on 29 June when we revisit the River Test at Flashetts in Overton for the ever-popular river dipping with the Watercress and Winterbournes initiative.

See https://www.hiwwt.org.uk/events/2024-06-29-basingstoke-wildlife-watch-river-dipping-flashetts-overton for details. If you would like to receive more information about future events, either check out the HIWWT website https://www.hiwwt.org.uk/ or email basingstokewatch@gmail.com.

Voice for Nature

The Local Plan, Local Nature Recovery Strategy & Planning

Due to the forthcoming general election, and the constraints that this places on Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council operations, there has been no progress on planning policy this month.

Five of our Natural Basingstoke Groups were represented at the ‘Restore Nature Now’ March in June, together with many of our allies such as Greener Basingstoke and Wilder Bramley. This event was attended by more than 70,000 people and aimed to ensure that the future Government makes biodiversity loss and climate change a priority. For further information on the campaign see: https://www.restorenaturenow.com/ Hampshire and Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust has produced some guidance to help individuals influence prospective MPs in their constituency, for those that interested this can be found here: https://www.hiwwt.org.uk/general-election-2024

Nature Notes

Wildflowers

After a day in London at ‘Restore Nature Now’, June’s wildflower ID training event reminded me how uplifting it can be to spend time in a wildflower meadow looking at the array of species and the insect life that it supports.

According to the 2023 ‘State of Nature Report’, since 1970 more than half of our flowering plants, mosses and their relatives have been lost from areas where they used to thrive. This makes the work that local groups and private landowners do to restore and maintain wildflower meadows all the more important.

This is a huge subject and many people within our groups are knowledgeable about local flora, so I won’t attempt to provide any form of guide here! Instead, here are some of my favourite photos from the event. And a fascinating fact that I learned on the day….. Birdsfoot trefoil (in common with other members of the ‘pea family’) is one of a limited number of flowers that have the ability to convert nitrogen into nitrates, supporting healthy plant growth whilst improving our atmosphere.

Knapweed

Training Courses/ Events

Training/ Events – Dates for your diary

29th June – “Butterfly Identification and introduction to butterfly surveying” training
6^th July: Sherfest (NB has a stall)

7^th July: Old Down Mini Bioblitz

12^th July (evening) – Volunteer Thank You Event (Down Grange Walled Garden) – I look forward to meeting more of you at this event
13^th July – Seed ID training
13^th July – Hatch Warren Summer Festival (several NB groups are involved)

26^th July – 2^nd August – Love Parks Week:

27^th July – Mental Health Day event (War Memorial Park) o 27^th July – Bug/ Butterfly Hunt (Overton Hill)

August (date TBC) – Seed processing and storage training

Second half July/ first week August – “Seed Collecting & Processing” training.

July – September (dates TBC) – Weekly seed harvesting (Old Down, Down Grange, Crabtree)

14^th September – “Introduction to invertebrates” training (a repeat of this popular course)

Reminders…..

NB Website

Take a look at the new website page supporting our recruitment campaign and drive to encourage local residents to take action for nature: https://naturalbasingstoke.org.uk/random-acts-of-wildness/.