A short walk from home is Hawkshill Freedown, a lovely and historic 13.5 acres that is now being managed for nature, although it was the site of Walmer Aerodrome during the First World War. From here aircraft were scrambled to protect friendly shipping in the English Channel.

By the time the Second World War broke out, a grassy runway was no longer suitable for planes and the area was used for radar and signal-jamming purposes instead. The M Balloon Unit of the RAF was also based there to drop propaganda leaflets over Europe. In February 1944 alone, over five million leaflets were released over Germany and France by 2,478 balloons despatched from Walmer.

After the wars, the land returned to agriculture but Walmer Parish Council was able to buy 13.5 acres of it in 1999 to ensure its existence as an open space for the enjoyment of the community.

These days it is being managed by a team of volunteers with very much the same approach as we have for our meadows – but they must face many more challenges than we do. It’s a much larger site with public access and a lot of dogs. I imagine it must also be difficult to get cut material offsite as well as watering newly-planted trees.

But, despite all these issues, Hawkshill was looking fabulous when we walked up there one day this week:

Dave has an old book ‘Records of Walmer’ which was published in 1890, three years before the tower was built. It includes a plan of the new church, showing a spire on top of the tower:

There was a lovely mix of flowering plants at Hawshill and there seemed to be much more colour there than in our meadows by late summer. Another difference is that over the years we have become very wary of the thuggish tendencies of ragwort and particularly wild parsnip, and we go to great lengths to ensure that neither of these plant species sets seed here.

We have an area of dense wild parsnip growth in the first meadow and it has been kept it cut short all year so that we can contain it and keep it under observation. Any parsnip outside this area has been pulled up:

The yellow-flowered parsnips – which, as well as being scarily good at reproducing themselves, can cause a photo sensitive rash on human skin – are growing thickly in this cut area:

There are too many parsnip plants to pull them all up in one go, but the plan is to try to reduce the size of the rectangle each year by pulling the parsnips around the circumference. The remaining plants will be cut before too long, well before they go to seed, with the arisings being deposited onto a tarpaulin and then straight into the green waste bins to further ensure no seed is spread. All this elaborate work may seem a bit extreme, but demonstrates how alarmed we are by wild parsnip!

The hedgerows and trees surrounding the meadows have now produced their fruit and seeds:

There is scarcely any fruit at all on the hawthorn this year and very few sloes. But guelder rose berries, blackberries, rose hips and holm oak acorns are plentiful. Each year is so very different.

The large amount of ivy that we have in our hedgerows has come into flower, offering a seasonal bonanza of pollen and nectar. In the sunshine, vast numbers of insects are flocking to it.

The life cycle of the ivy bee, Colletes hederae, revolves around capitalising on this late-summer bounty. There are thousands of these bees here in the meadows at the moment:

It’s not just the ivy bees – all sorts of other insects are drawn in by the ivy:

As we are patrolling the hedgerows we also noticed a jersey tiger moth…

An adult and last instar box bug…

…and several speckled bush-crickets with their super-long antennae:

We went out with torches at night and discovered that a different set of ivy-enthusiasts were to be found in the dark.

It was lovely to see such a wide variety of moths such as the angle shades, straw underwing and setaceous Hebrew character shown here:

But the most interesting thing of all on our trip out at night was to finally see some adult black vine weevils, Otiorhynchus sulcatus. A section of ivy near the house had loads of them:

A second wasp spider has been discovered in the meadows. It’s good to spot them because we will then ensure that the grasses aren’t cut in a wide circumference round the web to safeguard the overwintering cocoon. I have been calling by both webs every day to see what the large lady spiders have been catching in their webs. They are grasshopper specialists but I haven’t seen either of the spiders with one of these this year:

I wonder why they are not catching grasshoppers this year? Is it a web placement issue, or perhaps a bad year for grasshoppers and crickets? The wasp spider I was watching last year was incredibly successful in comparison to these two, and hapless invertebrates were pinging into her web right, left and centre. A large number of silken threads come out of her abdomen at the same time, meaning she can wrap up and immobilise her prey very rapidly indeed:

I have been noticing bats flying along the hedgerows when going out at dusk to put the peanuts down for the foxes and badgers. Our bat detector was dug out and readied for action:

We ventured out on another still evening to see if we could work out what species of bats were about:

It was exhilarating to both see the bat and now hear it as well, once the detector was tuned in to its correct wave frequency. We were hearing the bats at 45kHz which we think makes them common pipistrelles. We also heard a call briefly at 55kHz, so there could well be soprano pipistrelles flying as well.

I find bats so intriguing because they are so difficult to get to know. You only get the briefest of glimpses and I am not even completely sure what they look like up close. Here is a photo from Wiki Commons of a common pipistrelle that has unfortunately grounded:

We do have several bat boxes up around the property but have plans to get a few more up this winter:

Due to a housekeeping oversight, I found myself with quite a few slightly out-of-date eggs which I put out one evening along with the peanuts. Foxes love eggs and this one quickly started to take away as many as possible before the badgers turned up:

However, it hadn’t managed to get them all away before the badgers arrived. Foxes are very respectful of badgers and wait in the wings for the badgers to eat their fill. But the lure of the eggs was too much this time:

I love the way that the fox is almost tiptoeing in on bended legs in the hope that it won’t be noticed.

My final photo today is of a whinchat. This bird breeds in upland areas of northern and western Britain and briefly stopped at the meadows this week on its journey south to central and southern Africa for the winter.

This is a red-listed bird in the UK with its numbers having more than halved between 1995 and 2008, although the causes are unknown. I wish it every luck on its long journey.