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Nature Notes - July 2021

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Sickleholme Nature Notes

Following the prompt from the club’s email system, I do hope that you managed to see the Sky golf programme on 14 July which featured contributions from our own Marie Athorn. Heavily sponsored by comments from R & A officials, the programme sought to promote the work being carried out to marry golf course management with the needs of wildlife, and the mutual advantages being obtained by these activities. It presented much evidence to show how well this was working and how worthwhile the efforts were.

In fairness, in all of the time that I have sought to bring the rich biodiversity of Sickleholme to the attention of my fellow members, I have only once experienced the moronic “Just remember that we are running a golf club and not a nature reserve”. The support from so many of you has been tremendous and I think that we now have genuine belief that our golf needs our wildlife, and our biodiversity needs the golf course. The benefit to pollinators alone is one perfect example, and it is splendid to have the support of the club officials and our greens staff.

As one who spent seven years as a council member of the RSPB, it was also gratifying to see acknowledgement of the contribution being made by some of our larger charities to ensure that we get the right advice. Marie’s role is part of that process.

As ever, thanks to everyone who contributed their July sightings. Matt discovered a family party of Stoat, both Meadow Brown and Gatekeeper butterflies appeared in good numbers and the appearance of Betony and Harebells added colour to the 9th hole with a few scattered Harebells (see photo image) in other parts. Alan Kydd did his final round of the bird nest boxes and confirmed the good news reported last month with 27 of the 32 boxes being utilised. Interestingly, although Blue Tits and Great Tit occupancy was in roughly equal numbers, the Great Tits managed to produce larger broods. It was also noted that the birds which nested later this year had greater success as the weather settled down. Many thanks again to Alan.

Bryan Barnacle