Nature Notebook

Slow-worm City As well as being the Faithful City, Worcester is also known as Slow-worm City...

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Worcestershire Wildlife Trust @WorcsWT t worcestershirewildlifetrust G worcswildlifetrust.co.uk w Back in the 1990s, surveys of Worcester’s allotments revealed that they supported unusually high numbers of these legless lizards. Colleagues helping communities connect to wildlife in Worcester now are finding that this is still true; Worcester’s allotment-holders are proud providers of homes for these wonderful reptiles. Across Worcestershire, gardeners and nature-seekers alike are excited if they’re lucky enough to find slowworms on their patches too.

It would be easy to mistake slow-worms for snakes but if you’re lucky enough to see one up close, you might spot that, unlike snakes, they have eyelids. Adult males are grey-brown, sometimes with tiny blue specks, with a grey-blue underside and a thicknecked look. The larger females vary from gold to deep copper and they have dark strips along their flanks. Breeding gets underway in May and the young develop inside the female for four to five months. Slow-worms are ovoviviparous; they give birth to live young. The hatchlings are a beautiful gold or silver in colour, topped off with a black stripe along the back and with black flanks.

As well as being found in Worcester’s allotments, they’re widely distributed throughout gardens, ‘waste grounds’, churchyards, scrub and woodland edges across the whole county. Gardeners appreciate their large appetites for slugs; one allotment-holder in Worcester claims to have watched a slow-worm eat 17 slugs in one sitting! If you’re a keen gardener and would like to attract them to your patch, there are several ways you can give them a hand: • Provide safe areas for them to hide from predators (birds, mammals or even your cat) – log piles or a hidden mound of rubble is a great start. • Offer somewhere for them to warm up – they love to shelter under sheets of corrugated metal, roofing felt and the like placed on the ground in warm spots. • Leave some parts of your garden a little wild – long grass can be a great place for a slow-worm to go hunting in. • Start a compost heap – these are wonderfully warm places for slow-worms and can provide brilliant hunting grounds. • Be careful when mowing or strimming – always check for wildlife first.

If you spot ‘reptile mats’ when you’re out for a walk, please don’t lift them up. Whilst a quick look by one person may not cause too much disturbance, the combined effect of lots of people doing it, will. Tempting though it may be, please don’t pick them up. They’re able to drop their tail in order to flee but it’s much better for them not to lose their tail at all.

We’d love to know how slow-worm populations are doing across the county. If you’ve got them on your patch or you’re lucky enough to see one when you’re out and about, please take a quick picture and upload the details to our website www. worcswildlifetrust.co.uk/wildlife-sightings If you live in Worcester and are interested in getting involved in a Wilder Worcester, take a look at www.worcswildlifetrust.co.uk/wilder-worcester n

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