Little Green Space

LITTLE GREEN SPACE

Originally published in the Peak Advertiser on 13 July 2009

The sunshine has brought the bees, hoverflies and butterflies out in abundance. Back in March, Little Green Space planted a butterfly garden, with help from staff and parents, at Matlock All Saints Infants School. Now the bees and butterflies are enjoying a feast of lavender, thyme, rosemary, and buddleia, and later in the year they will find nectar from sedums and Michaelmas daisies.

I was particularly pleased to see orange-tip butterflies visiting our garden recently, as we hardly saw any at all last year. In fact, 2008 was the worst year on record for many species of butterflies, including the orange-tip. Poor weather has been blamed for their decline – butterflies can’t fly in heavy rain, and if they can’t fly, they can’t reach nectar to feed on.

This is one of the problems with climate change – as I write we are in the grip of a heat wave, and experts are warning that we can expect more heat waves in the future. In this country we are ill-adapted to extremes in temperature. But climate change brings with it a level of unpredictability. We could just as easily have a cold and wet summer, with torrential rain and flooding – such conditions are devastating for many wildlife species such as bees and butterflies.

Take 2007, which saw the wettest summer on record. This was a terrible year for butterflies with lowest-ever numbers recorded for several species. In heavy rain butterflies can’t breed, as well as being unable to feed, so let’s hope that this year we have better weather and these butterfly species are able to recover.

Orange-tip butterflies and their caterpillars feed upon cuckoo flower and garlic mustard (also known as Jack-by-the-hedge), so if you want to attract them to your plot, these are the wild flowers to plant.

Night and Day

Moths are also affected by the same problems that can lead to the decline of butterflies: habitat loss and wet weather being the main culprits. While we have around 60 species of butterfly in the UK , there are well over 2,000 moth species, and many of these are also at risk of extinction.

In fact, and it’s shocking when you think about it, moth numbers have dropped by a third since 1968.

Moths are fascinating insects, but they also form an essential part of the food chain. For example, blue tit chicks feed on moth caterpillars, and many garden birds, as well as bats and other mammals, rely on moths as a source of food.

Although most moths fly at night, there are well over 100 day-flying moth species in the UK – more species than British butterflies – so look out for moths as well as butterflies next time you are out for a walk in the countryside.

Or try joining a guided walk this summer. The Peak District National Park Authority has regular ranger-led walks, including Dovedale at Dusk, a gentle five mile evening walk which should provide the perfect opportunity for some moth-spotting. Visit www.peakdistrict.org/ranger-walks.htm or phone 01629 816200 for more information.

Heavenly Scent

If you want to enjoy moths from the comfort of your garden chair, however, it might be worth investing in some of the plants that moths like best. Any flowering plant that releases its scent at night will attract moths to your garden. Honeysuckle, jasmine, night-scented stock and tobacco plant will all smell heavenly at dusk – and the moths think so too!

In fact, the garden at night-time is a fascinating place to be. If you succeed in attracting moths to your patch then you will almost certainly attract bats. Bats are usually associated with Hallowe’en, but you are more likely to see them swooping over your garden during the summer months, when airbourne insects are in abundance.

One of my favourite activities on a summer’s evening is to sit in the garden and indulge in a spot of bat-watching. Our garden pond is teeming with insect life at this time of year, and the bats appear at dusk for a feast.

Things That (don’t) Go Bump in the Night

Some people are scared of bats, worried that they will get caught in their hair, and at times our garden bats have swooped so close to our heads that those fears seem quite reasonable!

However, it is unlikely that such a mishap will occur. Bats have a highly sophisticated navigation system – known as echolocation – which will prevent a bat from colliding with any nearby object (such as a head).

As a bat flies, it makes calls which create an echo. The bat uses these echoes by listening to how long it takes for the sound to return, enabling the bat to work out how far away something is.

In this way a bat can avoid hitting objects it cannot see in the dark. It can also locate its main food source: insects. And as just one bat can eat as many as 3,000 insects in one night, echolocation must work pretty well.

The old adage “as blind as a bat” would suggest that bats have poor eyesight, but in fact they can see almost as well as humans – if we had to hunt for food in the dark we might need echolocation too!

There are 17 different species of bat in the UK , the most common being the Pipistrelle. In the Peak District you may also be able to spot the Brown Long-eared bat, the Noctule or the Daubenton’s bat, which can be seen flying near lakes and reservoirs.

For more information about bats visit the Bat Conservation Trust at www.bats.org.uk or the Derbyshire Bat Conservation Group at www.derbyshirebats.org.uk. Or you could join a bat walk run by the Peak District National Park – see details above.

Meanwhile, I’m off to find a cool spot somewhere under a tree, where I can sit in the shade and look out for butterflies and moths. And I shall probably stay there until the bats come out!

Penny at Little Green Space