10/07/26 - National Meadows Day

Early July saw a celebration of the Lower Derwent Valley National Nature Reserve and its incredible hay meadows as part of National Meadows Day – hosted at the iconic Aughton Church in the small hamlet of Aughton (at the edge of the River Derwent’s floodplain grasslands), with the event proving very popular with visitors attending from all over Yorkshire 🤩

Starting with an early morning guided bird walk with local birder Duncan Bye, those who had pre-booked were treated to recently fledged Curlew, hunting Red Kites, singing Skylarks and various warblers and buntings, and (thanks to the Friends of Aughton Church) then finished off with a very welcome breakfast 🍞🥓☕️

Throughout the day Natural England’s licenced team of bird ringers were also able to show some of the local birds to the assembled crowds, and share with them their life stories, be that of the residents or those with their annual migration journeys to Africa, along with knowledge about their weight, size and habits. The capture and ringing of a Treecreeper and Kingfisher were real highlights amongst a bird-filled day 🐦🦉🦆

Visitors were also able to find out about the local moth population by exploring the contents of a light trap that had been set the previous night which had attracted an array of species, whilst our team of volunteers also spent time locating birds and showing them to everyone through their powerful binoculars and telescopes. Several (and hugely popular) guided walks were also enjoyed in one of the Ings meadows, which are managed each year by hay cutting and grazing 🚜🐑🐄

It was fantastic to see this event so well attended and to create a real buzz around the village, but we couldn’t have managed to organise and run this day without the help of our fantastic team of volunteers, so a huge thank you must go to all involved on the day and to those who helped behind the scenes 👏

04/07/26 - Himalayan Balsam

It’s that time of year again when Himalayan Balsam is starting to takeover and start flowering, and whilst we know it’s good for our bee species, unfortunately it forms dense carpets which shade out native ground flora, and so creating a serious problem (reducing diversity of flowering plants) and therefore having an adverse knock-on effect for many species in the food chain 🦋🐞🪲🕷️🐟

Also, due to this species being shallow rooted it fails to bind the soil together, and after having excluded almost all of the other plants from being able to survive, the ground alongside riverbanks, ditch sides and elsewhere in the floodplain becomes at risk of eroding away. However, good news is that the seed produced by such vast stands is usually only viable for a couple of years, so if we can prevent it from flowering and seeding then it is possible to reduce its competitiveness and restore a more diverse native vegetation cover 🪻

Our teams will be hard at work over the next few weeks hand pulling and strimming vast areas of balsam, as will many other people – residents, birders and groups have taken it upon themselves to pull it on their daily or weekly walks, and the Bubwith ‘balsam bashers’ have made huge progress clearing it from around the riverbanks and elsewhere in the Parish (after just one season the results are fantastic with balsam few and far between), and in its place patches of Marsh Woundwort and Figwort can be found. The Pocklington Canal Society are holding task days along the canal this summer, so there’s plenty of options if you’d like to lend a hand –  to join in or organise a group task in the LDV please contact Lucy.Murgatroyd@naturalengland.org.uk or for tasks along the Pocklington Canal please contact PCAS direct, or for Bubwith, please contact Louise Smith at the Jug & Bottle – or if you’d rather work solo, why not simply spend 10-15 mins clearing a patch when you’re out and about, and you’ll be amazed what a difference it can make! 😄

We wouldn’t be able to manage the balsam around the LDV without the extra help provided by our regular volunteers and corporate groups, so a huge thank you to our team (some pictured below) who were hard at work tackling it last summer before it went to seed 🌿