June round-up: W/e litter pick & biodiversity walks

Roy Vickery gave the second of this year’s wildflower walks, on the prison banks. This narrow strip of the Common, running north from the County Arms between Trinity Road and Neal‘s nurseries, was created when Trinity Road was widened in the 70s and has become a wild area with over 50 wildflower species and also attracting several butterfly species. Definitely worth exploring.

Lou and John, supported by our Monday litter pick lead Cathy, organised another weekend litter pick. Now that we have dedicated weekend leads we will be offering more weekend picks - hopefully every month.

Connor Butler, who did an insect walk for us last year, returned to the Common for a walk for the Linnean Society, including some of our members. Participants were taught how to use a sweep net and hand lens to help species identification. One surprise finding, hiding under a piece of dead wood, was a toad. Encouraging to see that these are living on the Common.

We ended the month with a ramble across the Scope with the first Wandsworth Scouts cub group. We walked to the site of the Craig telescope, built in the 1850s, then moved on to an area which is set for some improvement works in the autumn, on the way explaining the disadvantages of building dens in such a small woodland area, given the importance of dead wood as a habitat for insects. We then moved onto a newly established glade, created with the help of volunteers last year, including a couple of bat boxes, and ended up at the most established glade on the Scope, where cowslips grow in the spring and all manner of butterflies and birds frequent in the summer, the most recent sighting being the fairly rare Firecrest and various species of hair streak butterflies.

The variety of wildlife making their home on the Common is very encouraging and testament to the hard work put in by the biodiversity teams in the Council and Enable, supported by volunteers, to manage and create welcoming habitats.