| Butterfly Conservation Warwickshire’s Day of Action - Stockton |
| by Mike Slater |
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To celebrate Butterfly Conservation’s 40th anniversary, a special conservation day of action took place on an old cement works at Stockton on the 23rd February 2008.
One of the most threatened butterflies in the West Midlands is the Small Blue. It now just survives at three locations, all in the Southam area of Warwickshire. The Warwickshire branch has devised a species recovery plan for all the rare species of butterfly in Warwickshire including the Small Blue. Historically this butterfly was found in a minimum of 19 locations in Warwickshire.
 During the day of action, 10 volunteers including members of the local community, planted 750 kidney vetch plants in the remaining fragments of limestone grassland found at Stockton. Kidney vetch is the caterpillar foodplant of the Small Blue. Stockton is a former colony site for the Small Blue.
During the week and to support this work, approximately 4 acres of hawthorn and sycamore scrub were removed from former grassland which unfortunately had become covered by this scrub. |
 Supported by the CEMEX Community fund. |
Over the next few years it is hoped that the kidney vetch will spread into these cleared areas from seed produced from the kidney vetch planted on the day of action. Eventually, if enough kidney vetch plants become established there will be sufficient habitat to once again support a colony of Small Blue. There will then be a very good chance that the butterfly will colonise from one of the nearby remaining colonies. This would mean a 33% increase in the number of Small Blue colonies in the West Midlands - a tremendous conservation success.
Other rare butterflies still found at Stockton are the Grizzled Skipper, Dingy Skipper and Green Hairstreak. The bare ground created by scrub clearance was also seeded with birds-foot trefoil, the caterpillar foodplant of both the Dingy Skipper and Green Hairstreak. It is hoped that both these species will take advantage of the improved habitat conditions and their colony sizes will increase.
Thanks to Barclays Bank for their support and for paying for the kidney vetch plugs. A special thank you also goes to Val Weston who replenished the energy levels of the volunteers with bacon batches to start the day and chocolate cake to die for at tea break. |
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