It was a warm day in June when the Chairman of Butterfly Conservation Warwickshire - Michael Slater took a walk around Halford Flood meadow to carry out an annual butterfly survey. I thought I would go and catch up with him when he was half way round and as I approached he started waving his arms in excitment at me. "What is it?" I shouted from a distance, "be careful round there" he replied. Wondering what on earth Michael was talking about it was soon revealed to me that he had found a single pyramidal orchid (pictured) in the meadow! He said that it was a good sign for other meadow species as they like similar habitats to pyramidal orchids. So this is more hope that we can establish a species rich meadow in years to come.

The scrapes have been a little disappointing - having seeded them with a pond type seed mix, they actually produced about 1000 creeping thistles! Although creeping thistles have benefits to wildlife it was considered unwise to let them flower and seed as they would have a pernicious effect on the target which is a species rich meadow. Therefore each thistle was pulled out and removed off site.