 There is nothing quite like wandering with a small group of people each of whom shares your delight in wildflowers. This years wildflower wander was in mid-June a little earlier than in the past. Leaving St Michaels car park we crossed Goulburn Green admiring the wildflower strip by the red garden wall, that sown by Re-Betchworth in 2022. A symbol of the care for nature shown by our community. This year the oxeye daisies were the dominant flower with red campion, knapweed, birds-foot- trefoil, meadow buttercup, teasel and red sorrel. We spotted many pollinators but the highlight was the red admiral sunning itself on the wall.  Next stop was the Common Field where the Hamilton Estate has sown a 250m long x 15m wide strip along the field margin. This is the largest wildflower cultivation anywhere in the 4Bs The biodiversity of this corridor is incredible with over 30 species identified in surveys. We spotted, oxeye daisy, rutabaga, red and white campion, clumps of pink mallow birds-foot-trefoil, hawks beard, meadow buttercup, purple & white clover, sainfoin, cornflower, poppy, teasel and red sorrel.  Next stop was the beautiful cultivated meadow at Potters Farm. Tended since 2011 there is no doubt that it is the best cultivation of knapweed in the whole of the 4Bs. Knapweed does not sound exciting but it is ranked among the top nectar-producing plants for bees, butterflies, and beetles. It’s a favourite of all kinds of butterflies, including common blues, marbled whites and meadow browns, and is sometimes covered in these species.  Crossing the A25 we encountered one of the biodiversity hot spots of Betchworth. The grass verge by the side of the roundabout. Actually, its more accurate to say by the woodland that was here well before the roundabout and the drainage ditch that separates it from the woodland. Spend a few minutes here and you can find over 20 species of plant and a profusion of wildflowers including oxeye daisy, red campion, rough hawksbeard, birds-foot-trefoil, hedge bedstraw, meadow buttercup, red clover, ragwort, spear thistle, knapweed, red sorrel and teasel. Not to mention the nettle, bramble, giant hog weed and great burdock. Walking quickly past as most people do you would think it’s a tangled mess, but go slowly or stop and you will be amazed at the diversity of plants and the number and variety of insects feeding off them.  Next stop the beautiful natural meadow below the railway. Sometimes all we have to do with nature is leave it alone to perform itself. We see an expanse of grass and immediately want to cut it, or destroy the plants that are not grass to make a perfect lawn. This garden abandoned the idea of a lawn nearly a decade ago and decided to cut the grass only once a year to enable the wildflowers in the seed bank to grow. The result is a stunning wildflower meadow from May to September. It begins with a dazzling display of 50cm high oxeye daisies with a ground cover of creeping buttercup, birds-foot-trefoil and purple clover. Then come the orchids – pyramid, common spotted and bee orchids together with purple self heal. Covering several acres it provides a food source for a diverse population of insects which in turn feed birds, dragonflies and bats.  Our final stop was Betchworth Station’s goods yard. It used to be full of coal but now its owners have embarked on a labour of love to restore nature. It’s a managed project and it has involved a lot of effort to clear the site, create pathways through the woodland, add topsoil to tarmac, dig some ponds, plant bulbs, seed and trees. And through a combination of self-seeding and new introductions of plants the tarmac is slowly being replaced by nature.
We took only 2 hours out of our busy lives. We walked and stopped and looked, really looked, and what we saw was beautiful and wholesome and free and we felt good in ourselves for having seen nature and each other.
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The Surrey Local Nature Recovery Strategy (LNRS) was formally launched on June 2nd at Denbies Vineyard It has taken over 3 years to develop with a lot of contributions from nature-based organisations and community groups and several public consultations. It will provides decision makers, especially those involved in planning with an evidence base to inform decisions about new development. It will also form the basis for funding to enhance biodiversity. The full document and map can be found at: Part 1: A description of the strategy area and its biodiversity (PDF) – A concise overview of the LNRS area, outlining its key landscapes, habitats, ecological features, and current biodiversity condition, providing the baseline context for recovery action. Part 2: A statement of biodiversity priorities and species priority list (PDF) – The definitive list of priorities and potential measures that together will deliver a thriving, connected and wildlife-rich Surrey. Part 3: The Local Habitat Map – An interactive map showing:
The Local Habitat Map is of particular importance. It shows areas of highest biodiversity significance and areas which have the potential to become significant for biodiversity. Figure 1 provides an extract from the map for the area covered by the 4Bs Biodiversity Initiative. The most significant areas from a biodiversity perspective are coloured in dark green. In the 4Bs these are ancient woodlands and chalk grasslands of the North Downs, and other fragments of ancient woodland dotted through our landscape there are also a number of veteran tree locations. Areas with the potential to become significant from a biodiversity perspective are concentrated along the scarp slope of the North Downs, which is currently mostly farmland – arable, pasture and grass crops. Other areas highlighted are along the River Mole and its system of tributaries. Of particular interest to the 4Bs biodiversity initiative is the area in and around Tranquil Wood which has both a high value ancient woodland and an extensive area which has the potential to become significant for biodiversity. Figure 1 4Bs Biodiversity Initiative Area within the Surrey Local Habitat Map  May has been a month of two halves. The first two weeks were fairly typical - cool - but over the last two weeks of May there have been winds, heavy rain and searing heat, which has had a significant impact on my bird records both in terms of bird activity and of course my willingness to go outdoors to survey. During May the numbers of birds recorded singing or spotted during the survey walks were reduced across all four habitats but most significantly on the open farmland and single canopy woodland in the spinney. Although bird sightings were reduced in our garden and on the riparian walk the impact on bird activity was greatly reduced by the level cover provided by dense scrub, shrubs and trees. The validation of this thought process was reinforced by the fact that those fewer birds recorded on farmland and spinney were clearly linked to hedgerows and small patches of dense understorey. This is ironic in context of National Hedgerow Week at the start of the month… hedgerows are a man-made replica of dense scrub cover once naturally occurring across the English countryside before land was cleared for large scale arable fields. Although I’ve not yet finished surveying for this season, so far I’ve recorded a total of 55 species of bird across all four of my survey routes, it’s clear that 16 species regularly feature in most surveys… Wood Pigeon, Greater-spotted Woodpecker, Wren, Dunnock, Robin, Blackbird, Blackcap, Chiffchaff, Great Tit, Blue Tit, Magpie, Jackdaws, Carrion Crow, House Sparrow, Pheasant and Ring-necked Parakeet. The key feature of common across our local landscape that supports these birds are the ancient trees, dense scrub habitats and mature hedgerows that provide food, shelter and nest sites. Here is my data collection sheet for May  Walk any lane in Betchworth or Buckland in May and you will know, even before you see it, that hawthorn is in bloom. The scent arrives first — heavy, sweet, faintly medicinal — and then the hedgerow comes into view, its branches smothered in white blossom so dense it looks, from a distance, like snow lying sideways on the field margins. For a few weeks each spring, our hedges announce themselves to anyone paying the least attention.
This week is National Hedgerow Week, and it feels like an appropriate moment to say something about the hedges that help shape the character our parishes — and to notice, properly, what they do. Hedges are not just boundaries It is easy to take hedgerows for granted. They mark field edges, they line the lanes, they have always been there. But the Tree Council — whose National Hedgerow Week initiative draws attention to these remarkable features each year — makes a point worth dwelling on: hedgerows are essentially formed from trees. The hawthorn, blackthorn, field maple, hazel, elder and dogwood that make up our local hedges are not merely hedging plants. They are trees in their own right, with all the ecological significance that implies. Britain's hedgerows collectively run to hundreds of thousands of miles. They form the largest semi-natural habitat network in the country — a web of woody corridors connecting woodland fragments, farmland and urban green space across the landscape. For the wildlife that depends on them, they are simultaneously shelter, food source, nesting site and safe passage through an otherwise fragmented countryside. What our hedges are doing right now In the 4Bs our hedges are working hard. The lanes and roads between the village and the North Downs carry some of the oldest hedgerow fabric in the area — mixed species hedges with field maple, hazel, spindle and dogwood alongside the hawthorn and blackthorn, their species diversity a rough indicator of their age. The rule of thumb among ecologists is that each additional woody species in a thirty-metre stretch represents roughly a century of hedgerow history. By that measure, some of our parish hedges are medieval. Those hedges are doing something measurable and important right now. They are capturing carbon in their woody biomass and roots. They are slowing surface water run-off across the slopes of the Downs, reducing the flood risk to the village below. They are providing the dense, thorny nesting cover that species like yellowhammer, whitethroat and linnet — all of them in long-term national decline — still find in well-managed mixed hedges. And in the week or two either side of hawthorn blossom, they are among the most important insect habitats in the landscape, supporting the early-season pollinators on which our fruit trees and wildflowers depend. Hawthorn: this year's focus The Tree Council has a particular focus on hawthorn for 2026 — and it is easy to see why. Hawthorn is the backbone of the British hedgerow. It is also one of our most ecologically generous native trees: its blossom feeds hundreds of insect species in spring; its dense, spiny growth provides some of the most secure nesting cover available to birds; its berries — the haws — sustain fieldfares, redwings and thrushes through the winter months when little else is available. But hawthorn faces real pressures. Climate change is altering the timing of its flowering, creating mismatches with the insects that depend on it. Disease pressure is increasing. And decades of hedge removal, flailing at the wrong time of year, and the gradual loss of traditional hedge management have reduced both the extent and the quality of hawthorn habitat across the country. The Tree Council is running free online talks this season to help people understand the threats hawthorn faces and how communities can contribute to knowledge about its resilience. If hawthorn matters to you — and after a walk down any Betchworth lane in May, it is hard to see how it could not — it is worth joining one. What we can do Our hedges are in reasonable condition compared to many parts of lowland England — but reasonable is not the same as thriving. The pressures on farmland hedgerows are real: intensive cutting regimes that prevent flowering and fruiting, the gradual loss of hedgerow trees as old specimens are not replaced, and the incremental narrowing of hedge bases through repeated cultivation. As a community, there are things we can do. If you manage a garden boundary or an orchard hedge, consider cutting only once every two or three years and leaving the berries for winter birds. If you are planting a new boundary, choose native mixed species — hawthorn, blackthorn, field maple, hazel — rather than the laurel or leylandii that dominate so many suburban edges. And if you are a farmer or landowner with hedgerows on your land, the Sustainable Farming Incentive now includes well-funded options for hedge management and restoration that are worth exploring. The Betchworth and Buckland Nature Trail passes through and alongside some of our best local hedgerow habitat. In National Hedgerow Week, it is worth walking it slowly, looking at what is in the hedges rather than past them, and thinking about what those woody tangles of hawthorn, blackthorn and field maple are quietly doing for this landscape — and for us. This photo of the of the hawthorn and blackthorn hedge along the path north of the Betchworth Post Office is a great example. It leads to older and more mature hedges along the A25. Set your alarm. This Sunday, May 3rd, something extraordinary will happen at 5am in the fields and lanes around Betchworth and Buckland — and almost nobody will be awake to hear it. It's International Dawn Chorus Day once again, the one morning in the year when people around the world are invited to step outside before sunrise and listen. What they hear is one of the most astonishing natural performances on earth: the dawn chorus, the great collective outpouring of birdsong that erupts in the half-light of an early May morning and builds, layer by layer, into a full orchestral spectacle before most of us have even opened our eyes. It begins in near-darkness. Song thrushes, blackbirds and robins are the opening soloists, staking their claims in the still, cool air when sound carries furthest and rivals are listening hardest. Then the wrens add their improbably loud rattle, the chiffchaffs start their rhythmic two-note call, the blackcaps deliver their rich, accelerating warble, and gradually — tit by tit, warbler by warbler — the whole neighbourhood joins in. By 6am, if you are standing in the right spot, the air around you is alive with the overlapping songs of a dozen or more species singing simultaneously at full intensity. There is nothing quite like it. This year we are establishing a Betchworth and Buckland Nature Trail, to help connect people to nature and encourage us to appreciate the biodiversity that surrounds us. Our first project is to record the dawn chorus at 12 locations along the route and using the Merlin bird identification app reveal exactly who is singing and where. The result is a dawn chorus sound map of our local landscape. There is no substitute for being immersed in the dawn call but if Sunday's alarm feels like a step too far, our Nature Trail Dawn Chorus Sound Map sound map is waiting for you. NB It looks like it will rain early Sunday morning but don't worry you can experience the Dawn Chorus on a dry morning any time this week.   This last week has been one of significant change on my daily bird surveys as the landscape and climate go through a significant change. Firstly, the farmer has ploughed the fields, which initially brought earthworms to the surface that provided a glut for corvids (crows, jackdaw & magpie) and buzzard but now seeded and rolled the fields leaving a barren brown wasteland. The skylark have retreated to short grassland covering the restored quarry and landfill site in front of the Post Office. This has caused a significant drop in records for the field habitat. The second event of the end of April is the return of winter migrants, various species of warblers, closely followed yesterday by a Cuckoo (Cuculus canorus) that lays her eggs in their nests calling for a mate. The warblers and their allies are well represented in my surveys with records of five of the 13 species of warbler that regularly visit South East England – Garden Warbler, Blackcap, Lesser Whitethroat, Willow Warbler & Chiffchaff love the dense scrub of the River Mole Valley. Of their allies I’ve recorded Goldcrest & Firecrest in our garden, as well as the woodland and riparian sections of the walk. As yet I’ve not managed to record any flycatchers in this area. My updated species list is shown below. Right the cuckoo my bird of the week.  We've experienced a significantly drier-than-usual spring. Broadly speaking the weather was milder during April, although we have had a couple of late frosts and a few blustery days but not so many showers. I added 3 more species to my list of wild bird species with Moorhen calling from the River Mole on the riparian walk and a Serin heard and seen in the large sallow growing in our ancient hedgerow. The highlight however, was hearing and seeing a Gray Wagtail (left) at our garden pond, which I recently cut back some of the over-mature vegetation to reveal open water making it more attractive to aquatic insect species such as pond skaters, diving beetles and midges.  The finches are well represented in my records with Chaffinch, Linnet, Redpoll, Goldfinch, Greenfinch, Siskin and Serin all being sighted and recorded across a range of habitats in the 4Bs area. I chose the Goldfinch (Carduelis carduelis) as my bird of the month (right), not just because it’s such a beautiful bird to photograph and draw but also it exemplifies the value of gardening for wildlife. We do not dead-head our wildflowers and other plants at the end of the flowering season but let them form seedheads. As a consequence, we get regular visits from feeding goldfinch over winter and early spring.  I have now added Sparrowhawk, Marsh Tit and Siskin to my garden survey, recorded Mallard on the riparian walk and Tawny Owl in the woodland. So far I have recorded a total of 47 native species and 5 naturalised species of bird across the four transect walks.
My bird of the week is the Tawny Owl (Strix aluco), an owl that favours woodland and wooded areas with tall hedges and trees, such as the spinney near the barns and Betchworth church where I heard it hooting this week. This medium-sized owl is primarily nocturnal feeding on voles, mice, rats, small birds, frogs, beetles and earthworms but can sometimes be seen roosting in the mature oak tree near my garden during daylight hours. I have been drawing this impressive and beautiful bird since I was a young child and it has always been one of my favourite species.  Since starting the survey on first day of March I have been able to add Mallard, Sparrowhawk, Kestrel (my bird of the week), Stock Dove, Tawny Owl, Garden Warbler, Marsh Tit and Siskin to my list of sightings and hearings. I was recording a total of 46 native species and 5 naturalised species of bird across the four transect walks but the cold spell at the end of the month meant that records were down 46% on previous weeks. The sheltered conditions in our wildlife garden and the mature scrub and woodland of the riparian walk helped keep the sightings up for those two semi-natural habitats. Left a kestrel on the look out for its next meal  Since the arrival of spring, both in terms of calendar March and physically warmer days, the bird song in our wildlife garden has risen to a crescendo morning and evening as resident and visiting species establish new territories, select breeding pairs and build nest sites. Last week I was able to add Stock Dove and Garden Warbler to the survey and this week I recorded Sparrowhawk, Marsh Tit and Siskin for the first time. I am now recording a total of 50 species across the four transect walks.
The most sightings of songbirds occur in our wildlife garden (30%) and the riverine habitat (30%), which is a consequence of mature and extensive hedgerows and scrub habitat that provides food, shelter and secure nest sites. The farmland and woodland walks register slightly lower sightings (20%) but both support larger species of birds such as birds of prey, owls, woodpeckers and wetland species. There are some species that are seen frequently across all four walks, including Wood Pigeon, Wren, Robin, Blackbird, Chiffchaff, Great Tit, Blue Tit, Jackdaw, Carrion Crow, House Sparrow and Ring-necked Parakeet. My bird of the week is Redpoll (Carduelis flammea), a finch that favours treetops where it feeds on the seeds of birch and alder. Our house backs onto the River Mole valley and the riverine survey walk and it is characterised by mature willow and alder woodland and riparian thorny scrub. Redpoll often feed in flocks alongside Linnet (open farmland species) and Siskin (riparian woodland species), both of which are recorded in my surveys. We have been lucky to see and hear all three species on the trees in our wildlife garden as they move through the local area feeding. |
4Bs Nature Group BlogThis blog is maintained by the 4Bs Biodiversity Initiative Team. Its purpose is to provide brief updates of activities and encourage the sharing of experiences and learning. We welcome guests and contributions from members of the 4Bs WhatsApp Nature Group and wider community. To contribute a post please email the editor at biodiversityinititiative1 @gmail.com PagesArchives
June 2026
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