Summer Newsletter 2025

There’s quite a bit to share! First, a date for your diary if you’re interested in butterflies:

Butterfly Walk with Malcolm Hull Sunday 20 July at 3pm - meet at the Parish noticeboard Learn about butterflies, their life cycle and habitats

This walk coincides with the Big Butterfly Count, which this year runs from July 18th to August 10th, 2025.  This survey asks participants to count butterflies and day-flying moths in their garden or local green space for 15 minutes.    So, if you can’t make the walk but are interested then please take part. More information is here at www.bigbutterflycount.butterfly-conservation.org.  We hope to organise more of these types of walks going forward.

Moving onto skylarks - you may have seen the signs in the grassland asking humans and dogs to keep off an area of grass in the middle of the common.  This is to try and keep an area quieter to encourage skylarks to nest there.  We’ve already seen (and heard) some skylarks on our walks, so hope we’re making it somewhere they wish to nest.

In the same vein, we wondered how many of you use the Merlin Bird ID app on your phones to identify bird song?  I find it fascinating to learn about the different bird calls and songs.  I keep meaning to go out really early one morning, to catch the dawn chorus and record all the different birds. Perhaps you’d like to do the same and all the data for the common will be recorded?  We’re going to be talking to the local RSPB experts too about where to put up some bird boxes and encourage more to live here.

In fact, everything we do, has the aim of trying to improve biodiversity.  To encourage birds, we need insects for them to feed on.  All the branches felled back in January have been kept on the common to provide a habitat for insects, either as rotting wood, or to create dry hedges.  If you drive down Kinsbourne Green Lane, you may have spotted a large dry hedge that we constructed in a lay-by.  This location was the favourite place for routine fly tipping and we’ve cleared the ditch so many times.  With the five-foot-high dry hedge in place, reaching the ditch is now much harder, and so far, no more fly tipping has occurred.    Added to which the hedge is now a home to birds and insects. We call that a win-win.  More dry hedges are being built around the boundary, we just need some rain at the moment so we can securely drive the wooden upright stakes into the ground.

You may have also noticed some of the ditches have been re-dug to make them harder to cross.  Vehicles are not allowed on the common, and we’re keen to keep it that way.  Whilst we had the digger at our disposal we also filled in a number of rather large holes that had been dug in the woods.  We are very happy for the woods and common to be used for play, in fact we love it, but we do ask that in doing so: the ground is not disturbed, plants are not dug up and litter is taken home.   We are so grateful for everyone’s support with this.

And another plea - we’d like to respectfully request that the common is not used for the disposal of garden or other waste by local residents.  If you see anyone doing this please do let them know it’s not good for the common and to dispose of it in their green bins/compost/household tip.  In a recent survey undertaken for us by the Herts and Middlesex Wildlife Trust, it was flagged that the debris being deposited of non-native material is impacting on plant and animal habitats. We thank you for working with us on this.

The trustees would also really welcome some help with land legal matters.  It’s amazing how often questions come up that require some legal knowledge. If this is something you think you could help with – I’d imagine no more than an hour or so of your time every few months, then we’d love to hear from you.  Please email trustees@kinsbournegreencommon.org.uk.

And finally – you’ll see an information board going up this summer.  The design is with the manufacturers at the moment. This board was kindly part-funded by Allison Wren, using her local councillor funding allocation. We hope you like it!

Enjoy the summer days ahead of us, and we hope to meet some of you on the butterfly walk.