The Gloucestershire Cotswolds

~ judyheiser

We spent last weekend in the Gloucestershire Cotswolds:

I have underlined in red the places that I mention below

We had booked ourselves onto a Naturetrek day trip exploring the nature of the Painswick valley on the Saturday, and the plan was to make a weekend of it by doing other things in the area on Friday afternoon, and again on Sunday morning, before heading home.

In the event, the motorway system across the South of England on Friday was in complete crisis and, instead of taking us three and a half hours, the journey took us seven. We had set off from home at 10am and arrived, exhausted and in a ‘never again’ frame of mind, at 5pm. But our hotel was absolutely charming and soon worked its magic, helped by a glass of chilled, crisp white wine whilst relaxing in the gardens.

Burleigh Court Hotel near Minchinhampton

The next morning we met up with the other five people in our Naturetrek group along with a very knowledgeable guide. Over the course of the day we visited three nature reserves around Painswick looking at the invertebrates, plants and birds that were to be found there:

Our group trying to identify a tricky orchid on Painswick Beacon
Broad-leaved helleborine flowering at Rudge Hill reserve
The flowers of a broad-leaved helleborine in more detail
The village of Slad from across the valley at Swifts Hill nature reserve. Slad was the home of the author Laurie Lee, whose book ‘Cider with Rosie’ was about growing up in the village soon after the First World War, a time when traditional village life was fast disappearing
A female long-horned beetle, Stenurella melanura. Although the larvae develop in rotting wood, the adult beetles can often be seen visiting flowers
This long-horned moth is Nemophora metallica. I love the way its ridiculously long antennae start dark but end white. It was very fitting to see it on small scabious here because, along with field scabious, this is its larval food plant
It has been a good year for six-spot burnet moths in our Kent meadows and it appears that this is also true in Gloucestershire because we saw a lot of these moths over the course of the day
This teensy little ladybird is the 22-spot, Psyllobora vigintiduopunctata. It was only about 3mm long and, unlike most other ladybirds that eat aphids, this one eats mildew, particularly on umbellifers
We all remarked on how few butterflies were around even though there were plenty of flowers for them. A few marbled whites were seen, though
Marbled whites are particularly susceptible to red mites and this one had matching mites on either side of its face. The mites are most likely Trombidium breei, a parasite of certain species of butterfly, but there is no evidence that they actually cause any harm to their hosts
The hoverfly Volucella inanis is surprisingly large at 12.25 to 14.25mm. Both this species and the similar but even larger Volucella zonaria (15.5 to 19.5mm) are parasites of wasp nests. The female can enter the wasp nest undetected to lay her eggs and the hoverfly larvae then live off the nest’s detritus as well as the wasp larvae themselves

The photo below was taken in the meadows a few years ago. A wasp nest had been ripped open by a badger and, as I was trying to photograph the devastation, a Volucella zonaria flew in to check it out and see if she had an opportunity to lay her eggs.

This next invertebrate was the most exciting spot of the day for me. It is a Downland Villa bee-fly, Villa cingulata, and what a lovable dumpy shape it is. This fly was thought extinct in the UK, having not been spotted anywhere in the second half of the 20th century. However, it was rediscovered in The Cotswolds in 2000 and has been regularly seen ever since, mainly in The Cotswolds and The Chilterns. Unlike other bee-flies, the Villa bee-flies do not have a permanently extended proboscis and, although not much is currently known of its lifecycle, its hosts are thought to be noctuid moths rather than solitary bees

Villa cingulata

We had a really enjoyable day with a lovely group of people and we felt that it had been worth battling the horrors of the motorway system on a summer Friday.

After the field trip, we called in for a drink at a pub in the village of Minchinhampton before returning to the hotel.

Church spires in this part of the country are very tall, thin and elegant. However the top of the spire of Holy Trinity Church in Minchinhampton was pulled down in 1563 because of instability and the stub then adorned with a coronet in an attempt to make it look better. We have recently discovered that one branch of Dave’s ancestors were glove makers, living in Minchinhampton for many generations and this knowledge made us feel strangely at home in the place

On Sunday morning we visited the gardens of the Miserden Estate near Stroud, which has been in the Wills family since 1913.

Miserden Park was originally built in the 1620s, but the righthand section is more recent and was designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens, who also helped with some of the garden design
There were eight greenhouses with the footings for two more, all dating from the early 20th century. The kitchen gardens must have been very extensive at that point but these have now gone

A sculpture exhibition is being held in the gardens this summer:

The gardens were beautiful and we enjoyed looking for successful planting combinations as ideas for our own garden back in Kent:

I am generally not a fan of sycamore trees but this one is thought to be 250 years old and is pretty magnificent. It is growing out of a stone wall:

The motorways redeemed themselves slightly on the journey home on Sunday afternoon by not throwing any more horrible jams or diversions at us, but we have definitely resolved not to travel on a Friday again if we can help it.

Before we left for Gloucestershire, the two swift chicks in the box on the house had seemed ready to fledge:

Both chicks looking out of the box
From the outside, they could just be seen

But on our return, both swift chicks still remained in the box:

Both chicks still in the box on Sunday 28th. But, once it got dark, it became apparent that there was now only one adult left to tend to their needs
I was out on Monday 29th, but I got home in the early evening to discover that there was now only one chick left in the box. Excitingly, one had fledged during the day
On the evening of Monday 29th, the single adult (on the right) returned to roost overnight with the remaining chick
When I looked at the camera in the middle of the afternoon of Tuesday 30th, the box was empty – the second chick had also now successfully gone
Unexpectedly, the single adult returned to spend the night in the box on its own on Tuesday 30th

Our swift year has now come to a very satisfying end. It has been completely fascinating and we have learnt so much about them. Soon all four birds will be en route for Africa and we can only mentally wave them off and wish them every luck for their journey. I do so hope that we will see them all again next year.

My final photo for today is of the flat roof below the box, where there is a surprising amount of muck:

I presume that these are the faecal sacks produced by the chicks that the adults have carried out of the box and immediately dropped. But now that the birds have gone, this is the only outward sign that they were ever here at all and I am finding it a strangely pleasing sight.

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