We'll be looking out for the heathland birds and butterflies of the New Forest with Keith Lea, Consultant in woodland management and Vice Chair of Salisbury Natural History Society.

No dogs. Start time at Hale Purlieu 10am. Anticipated end time: 1pm

A mid summer walk in search of heathland butterflies, notably Grayling and Silver Studded Blue, heathland & woodland birds and heathland/bog flora. A moderate 3 mile circular walk within this beautiful part of the New Forest National Park.

Meet at the Nadder Centre for 9 am departure or meet at the National Trust Car   Park, Lady's Mile Rd, Hale Purlieu, SP6 2QZ for 10am start  What3words:///hardback.dices.cactus

Distance, Difficulty and Footwear - Please dress accordingly to the weather and bring water & snacks. Mostly flat walking but uneven.

If you would like to join us please contact us and let us know if you will be meeting us at Nadder Centre to car share or at the starting location.

Further to the blog post on 18th May, this is a reminder that we are taking part again in the National Hedgehog Monitoring Programme and we need more volunteers to help us.

Can you give us a hand on on Sat 25th July 2026 (extension to Sun 26th if necessary) when we install the cameras?

We will be taking down cameras on Mon 24th August 2026 (extension to Tues 25th if necessary) and will need help again.

We also need volunteer spotters to identify animals in trail camera footage online.

If you would like to get involved in any of these, please get in touch
via the contact page and we'll pass your message on to Inés. All training provided!

Last year volunteers from the Tisbury & District Natural History Society took part in the pilot for the Hedgehog Monitoring Programme and we'd appreciate your assistance again this year. The information is repeated below for any newbies!

Let us know if you'd like to join us a field trip led by Caroline Longley, Conservation and Wildlife Officer of the Wiltshire Wildlife Trust.

The reserve covers 71 hectares where the WWT are managing the transition of half of the land from prior agricultural usage to chalk grassland. Five butterfly banks have been made to encourage chalk-loving breeding pairs and the location is rich with birds and wild flowers.

Further information about the trip can be found in the Field Trips Details document.

Don't forget that we have an additional talk this week from Inés López-Dóriga who helped to crew a tall ship across the notorious Drake Passage to Antarctica. She will be reporting on the wildlife and the unique flora and fauna found in this stunning landscape.

​As always, doors and bar will be open from 7pm, free for members and people under 21 years of age and £4 for guests.  

Farmers deal with issues of succession as part of their job. Lately, it is the Family Farming Tax which has threatened a lot of family-owned businesses (not just farming) with unaffordable tax bills.

Another succession which we farmers deal with (and anyone with a garden) is Ecological Succession, which can be defined as ‘the gradual, often predictable process by which the structure of a biological community changes over time, replacing one group of species with another.’ It begins with pioneer species colonizing a new area and progresses through stages, often culminating in a stable "climax" community. Ponds are an obvious example, where a newly created pond with purely open water quickly gets colonised by aquatic plants which grow quickly to cover the surface with foliage and drop leaves, which eventually reduce the pond to a bog. The time it takes to go through these stages can be lengthened by human intervention, birds and fish (thinking Carp here).

Similarly, farmed grassland is prevented from rapid succession by regular cutting or grazing. Chalk downland, for example, has been maintained by grazing in a relatively stable shape for thousands of years, leading to a specialised rich plant and animal community. Cease or relax grazing and very quickly succession leads to long grass, over-competing specialist plants and, before long, scrub and trees take over. We need all these succession states to have the richest variety of wildlife. On either side of the Shaston Drove, we not only have variety of succession in abundance but we have extra variety of wildlife on either side; for example, on the colder north side we have Duke of Burgundy fritillary butterflies, and on the warmer south side, Adonis Blue butterflies.

At Chicksgrove, I have a species-rich hay meadow (created 25 years ago from a former arable field). This field has been kept in a stable state all that time by cutting it once at the end of each summer. The flora has increased in richness as new species, such as three types of orchids, have colonised. The drawback of cutting the whole field at one time is the decimation of animal life, so starting two years ago I left a strip uncut down the centre of the field. Straight away, succession kicked off with tussocky grass, suppression of the more delicate flower species and spread of scabious. On the positive side, the new habitat was perfect for rare and declining Marsh Fritillary butterflies, and a female found it straight away - probably flying from one of the Shaston ridge colonies - and laid hundreds of eggs on the scabious, the food plant of its caterpillars. As a result, in the course of two years, this spring there is a thriving caterpillar population.
​
Peter Shallcross

In the long hot summer of ’76, I was working on the gunnery ranges at Lulworth. I seemed to get home every night either white with chalk-dust thrown up from the parched tracks or black with soot from fighting fires on the heath. At the time it felt like a never to be repeated heat and drought but now we are growing accustomed to annual, albeit shorter, heatwaves. Looking at things positively, it was believed that the heath fires across Purbeck weren’t entirely a bad thing as encroaching scrub was burned off helping heath habitat to recolonise. Now though, such fires are so frequent, some less mobile species are wiped out without time to re-establish.

At the other extreme, we have all been talking about the wretchedly wet winter we have just endured but surprisingly it wasn’t a record breaker. Martinstown in Dorset still holds the UK record for the highest rainfall in one day (July 1955: 11 in) but this was far exceeded more recently for any 24hr period at the Honister Pass in Cumbria (Dec 4/5:13.4in). These torrential downpours are becoming more common as warmer air can absorb more water before depositing it and if the storm cell is slow moving that can cause flash flooding.

If we are asking ourselves what is going on with the weather, imagine what it must be like for wildlife. Their life cycles, feeding habits and preferences are geared to less variable seasons so rapid changes or extreme conditions can have a severe impact. Even healthy, sound looking trees which have grown up over decades with their form and roots adapted to a prevailing south-westerly wind can be uprooted by a “freak” storm from another wind direction. 

There are species which CAN cope, and they are the ones which can flourish in these new circumstances. Species of birds, insects and plants are colonising from the continent, and some are extending their ranges northward as the climate warms. At the same time, global trade has allowed the introduction of species from afar, although all too often these to become pest species when they flourish without their native predators.

Many of these are attractive and exciting additions to our fauna, but unfortunately, over the last 50 years, our native biodiversity has in general declined. It is only by visiting sites of my youth and remembering what they looked like then, what birds and butterflies could be seen and in what numbers, can I recognise that I too am subject to the ‘shifting baseline syndrome’. This is where we either are unaware of, or forget what things were like before and accept the current situation as normal when in fact it is diminished. Rewilding projects show how wildlife can recolonise and flourish given the right conditions but on their own these will never be enough. Much needs to be done to ensure that the decline in biodiversity since 1976 does not continue for the next 50 years.

​Andrew Graham

There has been a change to the programme for our April meeting which will now hear from local resident, Nick Radford.

Nick, whose home is in Sutton Mandeville, has more than a decade’s experience working on conservation in Africa, where he spends a large portion of every year. For his employer, the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society, he is the Markets & Conservation Finance Lead for Central Africa & the Gulf of Guinea. His work involves finding ways to deploy private sector investment that can simultaneously mobilise capital and deliver nature-positive outcomes.

In his talk, titled ‘Conservation at a Crossroads: The Future of the Congo Basin in One of the World’s Most Overlooked Regions’ Nick will explain what he does, and reflect on how conservation in Central Africa is changing, and on the growing role of investment, markets, and private sector partnerships in supporting conservation. Drawing on more than a decade of experience in the region, he will discuss how sustainable finance, tourism, and responsible supply chains are helping to fund conservation, while pressures on forests and wildlife continue to grow.

As always, doors and bar will be open from 7pm, free for members and people under 21 years of age and £4 for guests. ​We look forward to seeing you then.

Our first speaker of the new year was Jonny Cooper, from the Wiltshire Wildlife Trust, who gave us a presentation on the topic “Lapwing & Friends: Understanding and Conserving our Farmland Birds”.

The presentation covered WWT’s support of the Lapwing (or Peewit) under Project Peewit, and local conservation efforts for other farmland birds specifically the Tree Sparrow, Corn Bunting, Yellowhammer, Kestrel and Barn Owl.

Farmland birds are defined as species that fit in the following groups:

• any species dependent on the complex bird landscape that makes up a farmland  habitat
• species that are red listed, such as Corn Bunting and Turtle Dove
  
• where there is a local priority, for example Tree Bunting in Cranbourne
• farmland health indicator species, as defined in the national dataset of 19 species.
  

Nationally, since 1970, farmland bird species have suffered a 60% decline, with “specialist” species (that is, those most closely tied to a dependency on agricultural landscapes) suffering the most, while “generalists” (those species able to adapt to a variety of conditions) have fared better while facing challenges of their own, such as the Greenfinch that has succumbed to disease.

The WWT’s strategy to support farmland birds begins with finding out what is going on, and understanding what is required to improve matters. The issues include the consequences of farming changes to which birds cannot adapt, unsatisfactory management of hedgerows, negative impacts of development, and post-Brexit uncertainty over farming policies, funding and clear guidance.

Project Peewit was started in 2024 to investigate the cause of the sharp decline in Lapwings, and began by collecting data to help target conservation efforts. Three key issues were identified as predation, food availability, and decreased breeding density.

Locally, long established farmers and landowners have reported Lapwings being commonplace on their land in the 1970s, but the decline has been noticeable, and the absence of the species from the farms is something that they lament. Indeed, some farmers expressed the pride they had felt in their land being associated with the Lapwing, and consequently have been very supportive of the project, with practical initiatives such as scheduling the timing of grass cutting to leave breeding pairs of this ground nesting bird undisturbed. With Lapwing chicks able to walk around from day one, they are vulnerable to predation by Red Kite, among others. The Lapwings are very protective of their chicks, and breeding in groups helps with defence. Lapwing can live 10-15 years, and will return to their nests year on year.

Other farmland birds face their own problems. Tree Sparrows, differing from Lapwing in being short-lived but breeding in high numbers, have declined by 95% nationally, with food shortage and lack of suitable nesting sites being key. Conservation initiatives include nest box provision and connecting existing colonies.

Corn Bunting and Yellowhammer have suffered significant national decline, but are doing well in Wiltshire with support from farm clusters.

Kestrel and Barn Owls have suffered from a lack of small mammal prey and suitable nesting sites. Nest boxes have been provided and work done to ensure networks of rough ground within the farmed landscape.

In conclusion, Wiltshire maintains a special place for farmland birds against a gloomier national backdrop, and while the outlook for Lapwing is bleak, conservation successes on sites in neighbouring counties suggest that continuing efforts engaging with farming groups and working with landowners gives some hope for the future.

John Procter

Put this date in the diary and we'll send more information nearer the time. Meanwhile you can find out more about the film here