Baseline survey of the common
A pretty busy day started with a meeting with Leah about the launch of the new Discover Dursley website. We are pretty much there with the initial content, so the next step for me over the weekend is to put the site live and put out a call to the wider community for content submissions.
After lunch, we headed over to Sarah’s Field in Berkeley to check on the progress of the wild flowers after the winter management. They were looking in good shape, despite the recent drought and the surging dominant grasses.
In the early evening, I led a survey with the Stroud Wildlife Survey Group up on Uley Common. There were five of us, including two from the village.
This is the first formal survey we have run since the recent winter habitat management programme where the grassland restoration began.
We used the quadrat methodology, where you throw down a 1m x 1m square and identify as many species of herbs and grasses as you can. We started at the southern end, where it’s most rich and worked toward the far end where we haven’t undertaken any management activity just yet.
It was very exciting to see a lot of species popping through ... yellow rattle, meadow vetchling, bush vetch, red fescue, sweet vernal grass, lady’s bedstraw and more. I have to compile the full records over the next few days, but we have a pretty comprehensive baseline survey of the plants that are there.
Although there are areas of bramble still, you can see the grassland is recovering back to the scrub edges. And it was these areas were where we found some of the interesting species like lady’s bedstraw and possibly a small-flower buttercup (it was very small so hard to tell – these are very rare in Gloucestershire so probably not, but I’ll keep an eye on it as it develops). So definitely worth continuing the management to ensure the scrub keeps to the side and doesn’t creep back into the meadow.
We will be letting these go to seed over the summer, then we’ll cut short and remove the nutrient in maybe late August/early September which will give them a good chance to spread further next season.
