News

Sunday the 23rd of July 10-12am

Meet at Marston marshes – at the bottom corner (go down church lane past Eaton Vale scout centre and on reaching the railway crossing take the footpath on the left, running parallel to the train track, and enter the marsh).

Matt writes: “We have permission to collect Yellow Rattle seeds from Marston Marshes. These will be vital for us to continue to enrich the UEA meadows and it was a great success last year. However, many more are needed this year. Please come along if you can. Please don’t go to Strawberry Field for this one.” 

“Everyone is welcome, I will bring coffee and biscuits dates”.

Please support Matt’s important work on improving the biodiversity of the Yare Valley.

Why Yellow Rattle?

Yellow Rattle has a role in creating and sustaining wildflower meadows.  As the Yellow Rattle roots develop, they spread out, and seek out the roots of plants nearby, particularly coarse grasses, and take water and nutrients from them. The growth of the grasses is supressed, and this gives room for other wildflowers to flourish. In addition, the Yellow Rattle is valuable in itself for its nectar rich flowers that sustain pollinators such as bees and butterflies.

Matt Tomlinson of the Friends of Strawberry Field and UEA Meadows is organising another of his events to promote interest in the developing meadows of the Yare Valley:

The Big Butterfly Count

and use of a bird song id app.

Saturday the 15th of July 10-11am

Meet at the Strawberry Field top gate (or find us on the top of the field if running a bit late).

Matt writes: “Roger Carter from our group has kindly agreed to do the Citizen science project – The Big Butterfly count, on Strawberry Field. This will simply involve recording butterfly species seen in a 15 minute time window, we will likely use the 2 patches of wild marjoram to do this.”

“I thought that after that we could use a great little app to see which bird species are around the field margins by recording 10 or 20 minutes of bird song using the merlin bird id app, the app will identify which species are heard. If you would like to do this please upload the app and test that it’s working. It’s really a great app to have!” 

More about the big butterfly count is here.

The Merlin Bird app is here.

Matt Tomlinson of Friends of Strawberry Field and UEA meadows is organising a baseline survey of the plant life on the evolving meadow. Some of you will have heard Matt speak at the recent Eaton Eco Fair and/or at last year’s YVS AGM.

Matt writes: “As last year was the first proper year that Strawberry Field was managed as a wildflower meadow, we are keen to get a baseline for the richness and diversity of plant life on the field. This will give us an idea of the positive impact of this new management (cut, collect and removing arisings off site) and add to the value of the site. It will also give data to the Norfolk biodiversity information service. They are calling for this kind of baseline data and would very much appreciate our data.

The surveys will be by Quadrat (a simple square grid) thrown on the ground and a set number of plants marked if present (rapid grassland assessment). Experienced people will be in the teams to help out. If we have enough people, we can look for plant species not yet recorded on the meadow.

As always everyone is welcome and it’s a great opportunity to get up close with the meadows flora and insect life.”

The more of us there, the more we can achieve, so please join Matt and the Friends on Saturday 3rd of June from 10 am – 12. Meet by the gate at 10 am (if a bit late wander down and look for activity on the meadow).