Winmarleigh Moss.

Something of an adventure in the week on a visit to Winmarleigh Moss with Steve Graham.

For starters you have to find somewhere to park, as the Lancashire Wildlife Trust website says....'no parking near the site'....is a bit of an understatement I reckon. But we overcome the parking problem and set off for the adventure on to this huge 90 hectare site which has difficult access due to numerous drains and tussock vegetation requiring care to be taken over this the best lowland raised peat bog in the region. However, you can safely transect along the bank by Crawleys Dyke.

Raptors seen, 2 Buzzard, 2 Marsh Harrier, and a Kestrel. At least 4 Stonechat seen, with a pair behaving like they had hidden young, a few Sedge Warbler, Reed Bunting and Meadow Pipit, with a Willow Warbler in a small wooded area, and a Corn Bunting.

Five species of dragonfly were seen, with Four-spotted Chaser, Emperor Dragonfly, Common Blue Damselfly, Blue-tailed Damselfly, and Large Red Damselfly.

Steve's top target at Winmarleigh Moss was a butterfly species, but the visit was a disappointing one in this regard as we saw just 2 Large Heath, perhaps a tad too early, but 2 Large Skipper was a little compensation, and a Speckled Wood was the only other butterfly seen from just three species.

Butterfly Conservation.

Five butterflies seen on a hot sunny day at a 90 hectare site with perfect habitat in June, brings me to note....2024 was one of the worst years on record for UK butterflies. For the first time ever, more than half of our butterflies species are in long term decline, and notably with 85% of the population living in urban areas.

This causes Butterfly Conservation to ask....Will you help us to raise £20,000 to begin one our most ambitious Wild Spaces projects yet....Glasgow Wild Spaces   

Summary.

In my opinion, you would need to spend several hours at Winmarleigh Moss, and even then would only scratch the surface and probably miss finding lots of what's on offer here if you was going to do justice to it. Personally, after a couple of hours walking along Crawleys Dyke, and humping optics - binoculars, telescope, and tripod - weighing 6kg, was a bit much!

Pilling Lane Ends.

Calling in at Pilling Lane Ends, there was clear evidence of the decline of butterflies as mentioned earlier, when we saw just 5 Meadow Brown and a Common Blue, a little more encouraging was 5 Small Skipper....I think Steve might have done better than this!

But feelings were good when we saw a large number of spikes of Orchid. Steve sent photographs off to an expert in the field, to arrive at the ID of a mix of Southern Marsh Orchid and Northern/Hybrid Marsh Orchid.

White-tailed Bumblebee.

This White-tailed Bumblebee Bombus lucorum was found lethargic on the garden bench, it spread its wings a couple of times but was unable to take off. I gave it sugar and water on a saucer to drink, but it remained motionless for a while and I feared it was dead. For an hour or more I kept checking regularly, but the next time it was gone.