Moving up the A22 to Park Corner, I was fortunate to see a few small pearl-bordered fritillaries whizzing across the brackened heath when the sun appeared.
A lovely butterfly, about the size of a small white, which I soon realised returns to a favoured sprig of bugle after its dash around the heath. Consequently if you hang about, it will return. Much easier than the usual ungainly attempts to follow on foot.
At home, for the record, a count of 43 small blues was made at Campbells Garage, and a further 7 in the new colony by Walmer Castle car park.
Campbells is about to be turned into a building site, with various clauses in the planning consent to protect the Local Wildlife Site land adjacent to it, so I'll be watching them!
Reading the planning application, the ecology report concerned itself with great crested newts (although there's no water nearby) but ignored insects and plants completely, despite the existence of the small blue colony, breeding Sussex emerald and bright wave moths, and a good variety of flora. Neither is there a reference to the site's inclusion in the White Cliffs Countryside Project's management plan (on behalf of the site owner, DDC!)
Is this not checked by the council's ecologist?
1 comment:
Good to see you are still getting out and about :-)
Need one of those fritillary species to turn up here, only ever had one - a silver washed :-)
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