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Notes from Claude Morley’s Suffolk As 2019 marks 75 years since Claude Morley invited me to apply for membership of Suffolk Naturalist’s Society, I thought perhaps some younger members of the current Society might be interested in what the wildlife of the county was like toward the end of and just after the Second World War. I cannot detail everything that has changed or may have disappeared from the countryside but will mention a few notable species. My first 20 years were spent on and around the family farm at Hitcham, just up the Bury road from the White Horse during the latter part of which period I spent quite a lot of time cycling round the local area looking for all that was to be found on the roadside verges and in the hedges and ditches. 1944 was the year of the Nightingale (Luscinia megarhvnchos). Just beyond Bildeston on April 16th I stopped beside a smallish partly bush grown former chalk pit from which came a marvellous birdsong such as I had never heard previously. A brief session of careful stalking and there was my first Nightingale. When I got home my parents would not believe me as Nightingales did not occur in Suffolk. Two nights later they had to change their ideas as one was singing ‘down the Falls’ the stream at the bottom of our meadows, a bush grown tributary of the River Brett. Sometime between 1941 and 1944 the searchlight battery that had been on a meadow at the top of the hill was moved to the meadow at the bottom, opposite our farmyard but still belonging to the widow who farmed at the top of the hill with the aid of a foreman. This meadow also had a small stream flanked by thickets of Blackthorn and the Nightingales soon took over. When the three generators started up (there were 3 searchlights) the Nightingales were not deterred. They just sang louder! Meanwhile the meadow at the top of the hill, in addition to various concrete hard standings, had become very bush grown which appealed to a pair of Red-backed Shrikes (Lanius collurio). They set up home using the roadside telephone wires as a hunting post and proceeded to successfully rear a family, young being seen on the wires before they left in late August. My first year birdwatching was the last time that I saw a Corncrake (Crex crex). We were cutting wheat with the converted three horse McCormick binder that grandfather had bought in 1914 but now pulled by a tractor. It was August 7th and while father drove the tractor I was on the binder when this mottled brown bird with a weak flight and trailing legs left the corn a few feet in front of the tractor and made for the hedge across the stubble. Years before that, in the late 30s and early 40s, one had been seen almost every year in an 8 acre field part of the farm separated from the main holding. That field also had about two acres that came up every year thick with Charlock (Sinapis arvensis) which had to be pulled by hand and carted off before it seeded usually resulting in sore arms. We had 7 years back in Hitcham between 1953 and 60 before moving permanently back to Norfolk, and it was in 1954 that what had always been one of the first butterflies to come out of hibernation, was seen for the last time. The Large Tortoiseshell. (Nymphalis polychloros) Trans. Suffolk Nat. Soc. 55 (2019)
NOTES FROM BUTTERFLY CLAUDE REPORT MORLEY’S 2018SUFFOLK
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Dutch Elm disease had not decimated the old Elms (Ulmus sp) at Hitcham at that time and on one occasion I counted 32 White-letter Hairstreaks (Satyrium w-album) on a single clump of Common Knapweed (Centaurea nigra). The farm at the top of the hill belonging to the aforementioned widow had had two female trees of native Black Poplar (Populus nigra ssp betulifolia) About 200 yards from those two trees on the stream bank we had a marvellous ancient knobbly male of the same species. Whether they could ever have produced viable seed we would never have known as, when her husband died, she had the trees cut down because the fluffy seeds made such a mess. I soon discovered, by nipping through gaps in hedges, a couple of lovely totally unimproved meadows belonging to that farm, which had a sward similar to top quality chalk grassland such as can still be found in Wiltshire. The foreman once said to father “I don’t know what to do with those meadows Mr Bull, we only had one and a half wagon loads of hay from the two together”, (about 8 acres!). In addition to the right grassland sward they had the right butterflies with good numbers of Dingy Skippers (Erynnis tages) and Grizzled Skippers (Pyrgus malvae) Adjoining the best meadow was the back of Home Wood, Filled with Oxlips (Primula elatior) in season amongst many others. I did on one occasion have a good view of a Pearl-bordered Fritillary (Boloria euphrosyne) in the marginal ride next to the meadow (I was not supposed to be there either). What grew in the sward? Orchids! Fragrant Orchids (Gymnadenia conopsea) the chalk grassland species were evenly distributed over both meadows - 8 acres of them. One more acid area near the small stream which ran from the wood had a colony of Heath Spotted Orchids (Dactylorhiza maculata). Another small area held half a dozen Frog Orchids (Coeloglossum viride) in any one year. Early Purples (Orchis mascula) grew in one corner near the wood and Twayblade (Neottia ovata) was scattered here and there. Milkwort (Polygala vulgaris) was frequent as well as other calcicoles. The war ended and within a year or two the widow died, and the Brigadier retired from the army, bought the farm and ploughed the meadows up. When I went to see what had happened, I was confronted with a forest of Creeping Thistle (Cirsium arvense). Up the Kettlebaston road a spinney and the adjacent roadside verge held a colony of Common Spotted Orchids (Dactylorhiza fuchsii) many of which were white flowered. The nearby track to Box tree farm carried on until it reached a further isolated farm on the border with Bildeston. In the years before lanes like that were churned up with tractor tyre marks, that lane was awash with Sulphur Clover (Trifolium ochroleucon) which at that time I could not identify as my then botanical reference works only described common plants. From that lane one could pop through the hedge and make one’s way a short distance to an L-shaped wood that we knew as ‘Primrose Wood’ though I see that the large-scale current map names it as ‘Consent wood’. Whatever its name, it was the best place locally for Greater Butterfly Orchid (Platanthera chlorantha) though singles were occasionally found in other local woods. In a year when the Greater Butterflies were particularly numerous in ‘Primrose Wood’ I found a single flowering spike of Fly Orchid (Ophrys insectifera), though my usual site for this was near a pine tree in the
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‘Nightingale’ chalkpit which was also full of Pyramidal Orchids (Anacamptis pyramidalis). I did once find more Fly Orchids in a small area of woodland beside the minor road from Ash Street, Semer and just short of Whatfield. Man Orchids (Orchis anthropophora) grew on the roadside verge just beyond the ’Nightingale’ pit and also at Wattisham. That reminds me that Perfoliate Yellow wort (Blackstonia perfoliata) grew in Clay Hill Lane which went from Hitcham to Wattisham before a farmer took the land at Clay Hill Farm and then took the hedge out beside the lane and added to his field. For a few years after the war, the best place to see Yellow Wort was around some of the sites on the edge of the wartime Rattlesden airfield where they grew in hundreds. After the doodle bugs had finished and the searchlight had been removed, a footpath across to a big meadow beyond with a marshy area was the local home for Green-winged Orchids (Anacamptis morio) and a similar area in another meadow Had a regular colony of Narrow-leaved Marsh Orchids (Dactylorhiza traunsteineroides) though curiously I do not have any records of the other Marsh Orchids. Another species one would not expect to have found in this area was Common Rockrose (Helianthemum nummularium). For as long as I could remember there was a strong colony on the roadside bank between Brettenham Park gates and Thorpe Morieux. I would expect the verge cutters would have done for it years ago. Corn Buttercup (Ranunculus arvensis) grew in the stackyard as did Shepherd’s Needle (Scandix pecten-veneris) the latter also growing round field gateways whilst Corn Gromwell (Buglossoides arvensis) was a pernicious weed in a number of fields. Finally, there used to be lots of the true Wild Daffodils (Narcissus pseudonarcissus) in what is now called Old Grove, an isolated piece of woodland in the middle of a prairie of arable about half a mile west of Home wood. Is the wood still there? References (Source of scientific names) Birds: Mullarney, K., Svensson, L., Zetterstrom, D., Grant, P. J., (1999). Collins Bird Guide. Harper Collins. Butterflies: Brock, P. (2014). Insects of Britain and Ireland. Pisces Publications. Plants: Stace, C. (2019). New Flora of the British Isles 4th edition. C & M Floristics.
Alec Bull Hillcrest East Tuddenham Dereham Norfolk NR20 3JJ
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