Over the last two years we have been stripping the nutrients from the meadow by taking hay cuts. This has reduced the phosphates to a level which is suitable for our meadow seed mix of grasses and wildflowers to establish. Instead of trying to establish the meadow in one go, we are trying just under 3 acres at the upstream end of the meadow. The reason for this is that there is a risk of flooding at any time of the year and with that there is a chance that the seed will be lost in the floods, so we would rather lose 25% of the seed than 100% in one go. You could say conditions were perfect for sowing, the ground was just soft on top and the existing sward had been grazed and vigorously scarified, exposing plenty of bare soil for the seed to make good contact with. The seed was then pressed in with the smooth side of a chain harrow to increase its chance of soil contact. Once this work was done we let the horses back out onto the meadow to tread in the seed, hopefully further protecting it from potential flood water. The horses weren't too impressed with the attack on the meadow, but they did seem to eat up the loose grass that was pulled up during scarification.

We will take the horses off the meadow in late November and bring in the temporary fencing to protect it from the inevitable winter flooding. Lets hope some of this seed germinates and any that lies dormant has dug into the soil and can hold on in the next flood!

Despite the rain in August we found a small weather window of four dry days to make hay. Thanks to Anthony Spencer for making the hay and Richard Spencer for helping to load it. We went for round bales this year as we are storing them outside under tarpaulin and they shed water better than square bales. We were slightly down on the yield of hay compared to last year but that is expected as we are not putting any nutrients into the soil in preparation for sowing the wildflower seed mix in the Autumn.

We also had a "Moth Night" on the meadow shortly after the hay cut. A group of moth recorders came to the meadow with their moth traps (big lights) and managed to record 60 different moth species. One of which, the White Point was extremely rare in the UK back in the 70's but is now common in Warwickshire after it is slowly moving north as temperatures increase over Europe. The moth recorders put this movement down to climate change. As we improve the species richness of the meadow, it will be interesting to see if there is any correlation with changes in the moth community.

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.

Finally we reached the engrossment stage of the environmental agreement (S39) between Warwickshire County Council and Storm Wildlife. Polly and I went into the solicitors and signed the agreement which commits us to manage the meadow as described in the management plan for the next 30 years. It has taken 20 months from the date of the first survey to reaching the point where we can start providing Biodiversity units to developers that need to meet thier biodiversity targets - this is a real milestone in the history of this meadow.

The scrapes were seeded (EM08 Wetland mix) in early March and also three test areas of Meadow mix in the open field areas. Unfortunately in early April the meadow flooded and it is thought that we probably lost the seed as it was washed away with the flood! It's a risky business sowing seed - you need it warm and wet so the seed germinates and sets down some roots, but too much rain and the river floods before germination resulting in seed being lost downstream. Hopefully downstream floodplains and river banks will benefit from the lost seed as some will find good conditions to establish on the Stour and Avon as the years go by. One good thing the floods brought was water to the new scrapes. The picture here shows how well the water held in the scrape - some scrapes held water for 3 weeks, others a matter of days, it will be intersting to see if this changes over time.

In early February we established ten shallow scrapes in the low lying areas of the meadow. The scrapes were designed from the topographic survey and their purpose is to provide habitat for invertebrates and feeding areas for wading birds. During high rainfall periods the scrapes should collect water and retain it for a length of time. When the river overtops the spillway at the upstream end of the meadow, the scrapes will again fill with water. As the scrapes dry out, the muddy margins provide habitat for insects and invertebrates where birds can feed. When the weather gets a little warmer the scrapes will be sown with a wetland seed mix which tolerates being inundated with water. Each scrape has been recorded on PhotoMapp, which is an iPhone App which automatically creates photo documents of photographs using the metadata from your phone. The image on the right is one of the document outputs you can use (click to enlarge), Now we need rain!

BTW the S39 agreement still hasn't been agreed by WCC.