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This year Sussex Butterfly Conservation was delighted to work with the Arun & Rother Connections (ARC) project to deliver a series of butterfly walks. This Heritage Lottery funded project has been busy restoring and reconnecting wildlife habitats along the two West Sussex rivers as well as connecting local communities to their local environment and wildlife.

As part of the project I ran a series of identification workshops and walks. After a few wash-outs last year I had promised myself that all the events in 2016 would coincide with perfect weather and I was off to a great start when temperatures hit 24 degrees on May 8th - dare I say it was too hot? A team of keen lepidopterists joined me in Sutton Village Hall for a lesson in butterfly identification. After a gallop through all 45 Sussex species (who wants to be indoors on a day like this?) we headed out into the sunshine. There's some great countryside around Sutton; a great outdoor 'classroom' to get to grips with some of our more common species and their food plants, as well as a chance to have lunch amongst the bluebells.

On 15th May I led a walk on Graffham Down. Graffham resident Jim Kirke announced on the Graffham Village Facebook page "If you have never seen Michael Blencowe get excited, this Sunday is your chance". He was referring to the possibility of us seeing the Duke of Burgundy which Neil Hulme had discovered on the Graffham reserve a few days earlier (at least I hope that was what he was referring to). Up on the Downs I gave a quick introduction to the Duke before we all began our search. It was Margaret Newton who made the momentous discovery. She asked Graffham Down Trust's Paul Dimmer if he had a picture of the Duke and Paul showed her the butterfly on his identification chart. "Oh, so it's a bit like that one there then" Margaret said, indicating a small butterfly perched in front of them. No doubt everyone in Graffham village (and probably Petworth too) heard Paul's shouts echoing around the South Downs and we all hurried back to where Paul was pointing at a Duke. Fantastic news that the Duke is back on Graffham Down and Jim was right; 30 people got to see me get very excited.

At the end of June Colin Knight led a walk around Iping and Stedham Commons – the Sussex strongholds for one of our rarest butterfly species; the Silver-studded Blue. Many of these beautiful butterflies were seen as well as other wildlife; Common Heath moths, Four-spotted Chaser dragonflies, Green Tiger Beetles, Slow-worms and Woodlarks. 

I ran another Arun & Rother Connections butterfly identification workshop on June 25th at the fantastic Warnham Nature Reserve – but my luck with the weather was running out. It was apparent that 2016 was not a great year for butterflies and the weather on the day didn’t help!

By July 10th my luck had finally run out. My walk on Graffham Down was a wash-out marked by an endless downpour. However a few brave souls joined us and South Downs National Park’s Bruce Middleton delivered a fascinating commentary on the flora of the reserve. 

Volunteering after retirement is an excellent way to achieve new things and use your skills. I chose to volunteer part of my time doing some outdoor activities. Firstly I got involved with activities such as coppicing, scrub clearing, hedge laying and various land management activities through the South Downs National Park. It gave me a sense of purpose and I learnt about the importance and diversity of many plants, insects, birds and wild animals.

I also got involved with two activities from the ARC Project. One was pulling and clearing Himalayan Balsam to allow native wild plants to grow back and support the native insect life. The other was restoring heathland. I pulled and cleared rhododendron seedlings and pine saplings which have invaded the heathland and so prevented some birds from using heathland habitat. I thoroughly enjoyed taking part in these activity days and I am looking forward to future events.

Ses Wright, Arun and Rother Rivers Trust (ARRT)

The River Ems flows into the coastal town of Emsworth to the west of the Arun & Western Streams catchment. The Deepsprings to Racton Park Dell reach of the Ems has been proposed for restoration works by Portsmouth Water. This work forms part of the National Environment Programme (NEP), whereby the UK Government sets targets and objectives that ensure that water companies meet European Directives, relevant national targets and their statutory obligations; the Environment Agency has been involved in this particular NEP project and supports the proposed works.  The Arun & Rother Rivers Trust (ARRT) working in partnership with the Wild Trout Trust (WTT) have been asked to help plan and deliver these works in summer 2015.  The proposed works aim to help re-establish a more natural river regime over an approximate 300m reach of chalk stream which will function over a wide range of flow conditions. The key objective is to create a sinuous channel with varied bed morphology capable of supporting an enhanced diversity of flora and fauna in what is currently a heavily modified channel due to previous historic land uses. Portsmouth Water currently augment late summer and autumn flows along the mid-low reaches of the Ems to ensure a perennial flow from just upstream of the town of Westbourne. The Ems is a natural winterbourne with some of the upstream reaches naturally drying out during dry summer months as the groundwater springs subside after autumn/winter rainfall.  The Ems is currently graded as being of poor ecological status due to abstraction pressures and man-made obstructions that limit fish passage up and down the system. The prospects for augmenting flow to offset abstraction pressures through this reach in combination with channel shape modifications provides opportunities for restoring a high quality chalk stream capable of supporting a healthy and diverse ecology.

Petra Billings, Sussex Wildlife Trust

Everyone loves orchards! They have so many associations. Fruit trees provide a rich and valuable food source for wildlife, from the nectar of apple blossom to the fallen apples which support winter birds like fieldfares and redwings; from the bats which roost in old tree trunks to beetles such as the splendid noble chafer which lives in old pruned wood or woodpecker holes. The lovely names of old apple varieties such as Sussex Mother and Golden Pippin tell their own tales and winter festivities such as wassailing to bless the old trees for a good cider apple harvest bring communities together.

Interest in conserving our heritage apple varieties is reviving as shown by the number of community orchards growing up around Sussex. One such project is a new orchard at Easebourne Primary School. New Head Johnny Culley and parent Melanie Moss have been working with Petra Billings from the Sussex Wildlife Trust and Angela Ward the local South Downs National Park ranger, to plant a very special orchard at the school. A wide mix of heritage fruit trees were selected, including twelve different apple varieties, three crab apples and Victoria plum, which is of Sussex origin. The trees were planted by the children of Year 5 and their families who turned out on a cold February morning armed with gloves and spades and a great deal of enthusiasm. The project was funded jointly by the West Weald Landscape Project, a conservation project led by Sussex Wildlife Trust and the South Downs National Park Authority.

Apart from the fun of the planting day, there is a serious side to the project. The children are learning not only about the importance of fruit-growing but of the value of orchards for wildlife and their role in local history, for example Golden Pippin is one of the earliest English apples available and goes back to the early seventeenth century. As the trees grow, the orchard will provide a first-class learning resource with all sorts of opportunities for comparing the growth of different varieties and the fruit they bear.
 

Traditional orchards are a priority wildlife habitat for conservation. It was wonderful to see just how much the children enjoyed planting the trees and their interest in them.

Johnny Culley said

‘The children were very excited to be involved at the start of this tremendous project. I am told that we can hope to have the first fruit in three years and the children will enjoy matching the shapes, colours and tastes to the various exotic names attached to the young trees that they have planted. We are very grateful to the Sussex Wildlife Trust and the South Downs National Park Authority for funding this wonderful initiative and I would also like to thank one of our parents, Melanie Moss, who has been working on the orchard project for over a year and without whom the orchard would certainly not have happened.’

Image by Petra Billings from the Sussex Wildlife Trust

Harriet Barratt Dorling, Living Memories Recorder

Since taking part in the ARC project in the summer of 2014, I have walked around every day wondering about the stories hidden behind people’s front doors and faces. I was a volunteer on the oral history strand, and had the pleasure of interviewing people in the Arun and Rother region about their memories of the area.

It was striking how much of a role the river has played in local people’s lives, and how its management has affected farmers and householders over the decades – for better and for worse. Projects like this show just how important it is to include the people who live in an area in decisions that shape its future.

My favourite bits, though, were the stories of locals over the last 70 years, from the lady whose garden well was found to be full of gin bottles after she died to the man who sailed all the way from Bury to Amberley Castle in the floods, using an old door as a raft.

The hardest thing, surprisingly, wasn’t so much having the confidence to ask questions, but to learn when to keep quiet. We are all so used to making encouraging noises while someone is speaking that it took real effort to keep as silent as possible so that the recordings were clean. They are, after all, going into the local archives for posterity. I have perfected the ‘silent laugh’ – surely something for the CV.

I am lucky enough to work at the University of Brighton which has its own Staff Volunteering Scheme. Being able to do some of this work in work time helped me to get more involved, but even if you only have a little bit of spare time, I’d really urge you to take part if you are at all interested in hearing people’s stories.

I have got so much out of it – in fact I’ve caught the bug and have gone on to volunteer for two other projects since then, one on the history of the land around The Keep archives centre in Moulsecoomb (much of which used to be used as orchards and market gardens), and one on people’s memories of their toys with the Brighton Toy and Model Museum. I’ve even subscribed to the Oral History Society – and of course I will be getting involved in the ARC project again in 2015!