hiya bucks in Bourne End, Flackwell Heath, Marlow, Wycombe, Wooburn April 2014 | Page 40

But
t Reserve
erfly

Holtspur Bottom

Riding Lane, Holtspur, HP9 1BT

Holtspur Bottom Butterfly Reserve is on the south facing hillside at the end
of the Holtspur Valley, opposite the Holtspur Bank Local Nature Reserve. The
land is owned by Beaconsfield Town Council, and has been managed by the
Upper Thames Branch of Butterfly Conservation since 1998. It is shown on
Ordnance Survey maps as the site of an old sewage works, and part of the land
was once used as a landfill site, as some of you
may remember. Much of the land now occupied
by the Reserve was used as low–intensity
grazing for many years. Shortly before Butterfly
Conservation’s involvement, the flower-rich fields
were ploughed and sowed with ryegrass, leaving
little trace of the wild flowers that had once been
there and very many fewer butterflies…
How times have changed! When Butterfly
Conservation took over management of the site,
we took stock of the situation and then reseeded
Six-spot Burnet moths ©
Wendy Wilson
parts of the Reserve with a mix of native wild
flowers. It is now a peaceful
and uplifting haven for butterflies and moths, with its
meadows full of flowers from Spring through till Autumn.
Twenty-seven species of butterfly are regularly seen on
the reserve, and over 220 species of moths have been
recorded. There are other rarities too; such as species of
‘red data book’ mining bees among orchids and fragrant
flowers.
The meadows themselves are chalk grassland, a special
kind of habitat that is rapidly being lost from the U.K.
In order to conserve it and ensure that the delicate and
beautiful wild flowers that are so attractive to the butterflies
and other insects are not overwhelmed by more vigorous,
coarser grasses we need to manage the reserve. This
means keeping the nutrient levels in the soil low, which
discourages these more vigorous plants. To do this, we
Male Chalkhill Blue butterfly ©Jim Asher
have adopt YH