Small Blue Reintroduction Project wildflower planting day Sunday 15th May

Practical Conservation day at SWT Gailes March reserve, Irvine to create habitat for the Small Blue butterfly. ALL WELCOME!

Tasks for the day will include:
1. Planting about 500 kidney vetch plants, which are the caterpillar food plant for the Small Blue.
2.Having fun outdoors and enjoying some sunshine (hopefully!)

Trowels and other tools will be provided. If you have work gloves bring them along and don't forget to bring a packed lunch.

We wll have access to the neaby SWT office in Irvine that has toilet facilities if needed and even tea/coffee! Hurrah!:)

Getting there: Trains from Glasgow Central leave every 30 minutes (i.e. 9.30 or 10am) and take 35 minutes to get to Irvine. We can collect you from Irvine Train station. A lift from Glasgow might also be available.
Parking is available at the reserve just off Marine Drive (beside the track next to the gate at NS323360.)

e-mail Scott Shanks (scottshanks01 @ msn.com) for more details

March 2011 visit to Gailes Marsh

I returned to visit Gailes Marsh in late March, just before the last few horses left the reserve. They had done a good job in cropping down rough grass throughout the meadow areas of the reserve, although some areas such as the entrance were looking a little worse for wear.

Entrance to Gailes Marsh where the horses are fed.

In the photos below you can see horses feeding on the grass between the kidney vetch strips. There were 4 left on the reserve at the time, and they should be gone by the end of March.

The kidney vetch plants in the strips were looking healthy and a good proportion should hopefully flower this year.

Other Small Blue news
I've heard from Owen Figgis who has been growing kidney vetch for the project. It sounds like quite a lot of the seedlings which were sown last autumn succumbed to the frost, but he still has about 200 that survived, plus 120 year-old plants that were sown last year. He has also sown 4 further trays this year which have germinated well. So we should have plenty of plants for out next Small Blue Work party this May! Hurrah! Many thanks to Owen for the photos! :)

Year-old Kidney Vetch Plant

Kidney vetch seedlings sown 2011.

Young Kidney vetch plant sown Autumn 2010.

January 2011 visit to SWT Gailes Marsh

In mid-January, following a break in the cold snowy weather, I went back to Gailes to see how things were faring. 10 horses were on the reserve at the time, taking adantage of the lack of snow to get to the grass. The area at the entrance where the horses are fed was hard-grazed with quite a few bare patches.Potentially good for wildflower germination.
The South-West of the reserve where the kidney vetch had been sown was also well grazed, but thankfully the kidney vetch plants were looking healthy desipite the harsh winter.

The kidney vetch strips.

In addition to kidney vetch I could see a range of other plant species colonising the bare strips including clovers, plantains, sorrel, bitter cress, daisies and some grasses. The horses had churned up a few sections in the bare strips and it looked like they had been using the banks to shelter from the wind. This will be good for keeping the ground disturbed, which is required for kidney vetch germination.

When the wildlife hedge was planted, it was put in a distance from the boundry fence to prevent the horses nibbling, which was a very good plan as can be seen below!

The wildlife hedge.

Small Blue Project Summary of 2010

The Small Blue Reintroduction Project has now been going for over a year! Hurrah!
The last update was way back in May 2010, so there's lots of exciting news to catch up on! I'll start with a summary of the project during the later part of 2010.

During the summer a number of volunteers visited Gailes to check up on the kidney vetch that was sown and planted earlier in the year. There was some interesting news in July when it was noticed that a few of the young plants that had been planted in May had began to flower in their first year! This is often a sign that the plants are stressed, and was following a couple of weeks of very dry conditions. Often this rapid flowering strategy can lead to the plants puting all their energy into seed production and then dying. Luckily most of the plants seemed to survive well. The seedlings that were sown in the bare strips appeared to fare much better during the drought, possibly because they'd grown in situ.
Kidney vetch planted in May

Kidney Vetch seedlings sown in March 2010.

The new hedge was also hit hard by the dry conditions in the summer, with quite a few loosing leaves. We'll have to wait until later in 2011 to see if sections of the hedge will need to be replaced. Tree guards were applied to the crab apples to protect them from rabbits.

In June and July, together with a couple of volunteers we set about recording areas of kidney vetch within and around the reserve. Good amounts of mature kidney vetch plants were found amoung the dunes south of Irvine, which should make perfect natural habitat for the small blue to colonise.

In early october I visited Gailes to check on the kidney vetch. The grass was looking lush and there were still a few Common Blue and Small Copper zipping between flowerheads.
Gailes Marsh October 2010Wildlife Hedge at Gailes MarshKidney vetch in bare scrapes October 2010Small Copper on Ragwort October 2010Male Common Blue on Ragwort October 2010.

In the Autumn to 20 horses were released to graze Gailes Marsh. They'll stay there until the end of March 2011. Their grazing helps to promote an abundance of wild flowers and keeps grasses from taking over.

Kidney Vetch planting day at Gailes Marsh. Saturday the 8th May

On Friday night (7th May) I met up with Gill Smart, the reserve manager at Gailes Marsh, to set up 2 heath traps to survey moth species on the reserve. It was quite a chilly night, but as we walked round the reserve a few brave moths were spotted dashing past. Grasshopper warblers were calling until it was pretty dark.
The next morning (Saturday 8th May) I picked up 2 keen volunteers from Glasgow and we drove down to Irvine for the wildflower planting day at Gailes Marsh. We were lucky once more with the weather. Sunshine and beautiful blue skies with clear views across to Arran! 16 volunteers arrived for the planting event, which was really great and we had a few extra supporters arrive later too!
The first task of the day was to check the moth traps that had been ran overnight. We had a number of species including Hebrew Characters, Clouded Drabs and a fantastic Red Sword-Grass (see photo below) which were new records for the site.Spot the Moth?

We then visited the scrapes of bare soil and banks that had been sown with KV seed during the March volunteer day. The surviving seedlings (that hadn't been munched by weevils) were doing well, although they were much smaller than the van-load of plants grown by Owen Figgis that he'd brought up from Castle
Douglas that morning.
After a brief introduction to the project, everyone took a tray of kidney vetch seedlings and set off to plant them in wee groups throughout the reserve.
The planting didn't take too long, and after watering in the plants we sat down for chat and lunch in the sunshine.

After lunch we met Harry, one of the regular SWT volunteers that help with the butterfly transect at Gailes Marsh. He was doing his weekly count while we were there. Butterflies seen by the volunteers included Green-Veined Whites, Orange tips, Peacocks, Small Coppers and a single Large White (that may have come up from Castle Douglas with the trays of kidney vetch). We then set off for a nature foray around the reserve which was a lot of fun. Highlights included the fantastically busy sandmartin nest site, finding a bird-of prey pellet and guessing the identity of the wee bones, frogs and hundreds of tadpoles in the loch, Drinker moth and Garden Tiger moth caterpillars, a whole range of beetles, hoverflies, bees (possibly including a very rare solitary bee), spiders and quite a few species of birds (including Wheatears, curlews, oyster catchers and willow warblers in abundance). All in all it was a fantastic day and I really enjoyed meeting lots of enthusiastic volunteers. Thanks to everyone who came along!

Kidney vetch planting day at Gailes Marsh. Saturday 8th May 2010.

A week or so ago I received a call from Owen Figgis (who has been very successful in growing kidney vetch for us) to say that the KV seedlings were almost ready to plant out at Gailes Marsh. So hastily we've organised a kidney vetch planting day for Saturday the 8th May. ALL WELCOME!

Tasks for the day will include:
1. Planting about 500 kidney vetch plants, which are the caterpillar food plant for the Small Blue.
2.Having fun outdoors and enjoying some sunshine (hopefully!)

Trowels and other tools will be provided (but if you've got your own it might come in handy). If you have work gloves bring them along and don't forget to bring a packed lunch.

We may even have access to the neaby SWT office in Irvine that has toilet facilities if needed and even tea/coffee! Hurrah!:)

Getting there: Trains from Glasgow Central leave every 30 minutes (i.e. 9.30 or 10am) and take 35 minutes to get to Irvine. We can collect you from Irvine Train station. A lift from Glasgow might also be available.
Parking is available at the reserve just off Marine Drive (beside the track next to the gate at NS323360.)

e-mail Scott Shanks (scottshanks01@msn.com) for more details or call/text 07793052501

If you would like to come along on the day (Tomorrow!), you can either come straight to the reserve for about 10.45-11ish, or give me a call and I can come get you from Irvine train station about 10.45am. :)

Mysterious muncher attacks our kidney vetch seedlings!

Project Update:
I took a trip down to Gailes Marsh on Sunday the 18th of April to see how the kidney vetch seedlings were doing a month after they were sown.
After early reports of superb germination rates I was expecting to see a green haze over the scrapes that had been sown with seed. However the number of seedlings isn't actually that dense, with some of the scrapes having very few. Did birds take the germinating seed? On closer inspection many seedlings show signs of something feeding on them, with little chunks missing from the primary leaves. Wood mice or voles perhaps? Hopefully whatever is munching on them will find something better to eat and leave the remaining seedlings to develop in peace!
I had a walk along the length of the wildlife hedge that we planted. Almost all of the hedge plants have new bursting leaves, which was great to see! 18 (mostly blackthorns) out of the 330 planted were still looking dormant, but fingers crossed they'll be fine. Tree protectors have been put on each of the crab apples to prevent rabbits doing too much damage.
The horses were taken off at the end of March, but still copious amounts of horse poo everywhere. Wildlife seen on the reserve included: At least 13 sand martins (zooming in and out of the artificial sand bank), skylarks, snipe, mute swan, moorhens, mallards, coal tits, blue tits and great tits, gold crests, goldfinches, bullfinches, chaffinches, blackbirds, carrion crows and lots of queen buff-tailed bumblebees.