It has been a difficult last half of the summer this year for butterflies. Most of the nectar plants have been dried out by the very high temperatures and lack of rain. Pamela Peacock managed to catch this freshly hatched red admiral recently, on what looks like ivy.
Autumn in August! There is often a small leaf fall at this time, but this is the earliest time of a major leaf fall I can remember since 1976.
As the wild flowers grow on the Pavilion stones, they are starting to attract various insect life. The attached picture shows seven spotted ladybirds making inroads into this area. Picture by Sigi Goolden.
The picture shows a clump of harebells (campanula rotundifolia), also known as fairy bells. They are to be found on the upper part of the track that goes from South Farm to the South Downs Way on Hyden Hill. In Scotland harebells are known as ‘bluebells’ and bluebells are known as wild hyacinths, just to confuse us.
With the continuing hot and dry weather it has been a very good year for the wonderful silver-washed fritillary butterfly in East Meon, amongst many others butterfly species. This is a large and very decorative butterfly with a graceful swooping flight. This year they have been spotted in Hen Wood, Duncombe Wood, and Hyden Hill.
As the weather warms and their food plants mature the local butterfly numbers are steadily increasing. EM Nature runs a regular butterfly transit (walk) that reports sitings to the UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme, from 1 April to the end of September. Today, June 30, marbled whites (46) and ringlets (50) are doing particularly well.
East Meon Nature has been working on the stony ground north of the sports pavilion to try and turn it into a wildflower area. This is going to take some time, but as the pictures shows, some progress is being made. Oxeye daisy is quite prominent at the moment along with campion and a number of other wildflowers.
The Bourne that flows out of the spring fed pond to the north of Duncombe Wood, and then flows north to the corner of Coombe Road near the village, has just run dry. It did not run dry at all in 2021 due to a wet late spring and summer. (A bourne is an intermittent stream , flowing from a spring. Frequent in chalk and limestone country where the rock becomes saturated with winter rain, that slowly drains Read more…
There is a magnificent showing of narrow leaved helleborines ( Cephalanthera longifolia) in Chappets Copse at the moment. This has one of the largest population of these rare orchids in the UK. There are four single ones in the northern bank of the Bereleigh Road if you are walking up that way, but they are much more stunted than the ones in Chappets Copse.
Pictured is the rather unusual fruit of the wych elm. This picture was taken of a branch of the junior tree next to great wych elm in Halnacker Lane. After dutch elm disease, these trees are very rare so we are lucky to have a couple in the parish