NATURE DIARY: this is the time of year to enjoy wildflower meadows and summer swifts...

To wander through a flower-filled meadow, buzzing with bees and other insects, whilst a skylark sings high overhead is one of the pleasures of early summer.

Sadly, not many of us get the chance to do this these days. Over 97 per cent of our lowland wildflower meadows have disappeared since the end of the Second World War. Many meadows have simply been ploughed up to make way for crops, whilst others have been ‘improved’ for grazing by commercial sheep and cattle through the addition of fertiliser and herbicides. Our need to feed our growing population has effectively squeezed out wildlife.

Fields of flowers are now so rare that many people have simply never seen one and our perception of a ‘natural’ landscape has been skewed to a new ‘familiar’. The green landscape so characteristic of the Yorkshire Dales is pretty much a monoculture of rye grass; great for dairy cattle and sheep but abysmal for wildlife.

Hay meadows may contain over 100 plant species in a hectare, unlike improved pasture that may contain less than ten. This is a relatively modern phenomenon and in a few places, notably in Swaledale and Ribblesdale, you can glimpse how the Dales would have looked for centuries when grazing was at a lower intensity.

Meadowseet. Photo: Paul Lane

One remnant in Ribblesdale – Ashes Pasture – is currently subject to a fundraising appeal. This beautiful site boasts some incredibly rare wild flowers such as lesser butterfly orchid and may provide feeding areas for charismatic birds including black grouse and curlew. Yorkshire Wildlife Trust is seeking funds to save it forever. If you can spare a few pounds to help with this, please visit www.ywt.org.uk/donate.

Elsewhere, in a few corners of the countryside – usually those protected by a nature conservation charity such as Yorkshire Wildlife Trust, or perhaps where an environmentally-conscious farmer has put part of the land into a countryside stewardship scheme – you may still find wildflower meadows. They are a window back in time, a multi-coloured hint at what the landscape would have once looked like and has sadly been lost.

Wheldrake Ings Nature Reserve near York has one of England’s finest lowland meadows. This type of seasonally-flooded meadow lying in the floodplain of the River Derwent is very rare in England. It has a characteristic assemblage of plants including grasses such as meadow foxtail and crested dog’s-tail, and flowers including the crimson raspberry-like heads of great burnet and yellows of meadow vetchling and meadow buttercup. Traditional management over centuries has continued under Yorkshire Wildlife Trust’s stewardship and this has maintained the diversity of wild flowers.

Skylark. Photo: Amy Lewis

Unlike grasslands which are cut early for silage or haylage enabling farmers to produce two or three crops in a season, traditional meadow management leaves the cut until later, usually in July. This allows ground-nesting birds such as curlews and skylarks to fledge their young before the cutting starts. Wildflowers and grasses will have set seed and the plants will be dried and then removed as hay. Once the meadow starts to regrow, livestock are turned out on to the land to graze the new growth. At Wheldrake Ings, sheep graze through the summer and early autumn and are removed before the land floods again. This farming method has continued in this way for centuries and the landscape has little changed in this time, and is still a haven for wildlife.

But this site isn’t without its problems too. Floodwater, an essential and annual part of the system now inundates the land with chemicals applied to farmland further upstream. This is having a negative impact on both the plant life and the mini-beasts that live within the meadow. Also, unseasonal floods can have a huge impact on ground-nesting birds which find refuge in these low-lying meadows. In early June this year, flooding put the site under water for a few days, devastating any birds still with eggs or young in the nest. Despite these issues, Wheldrake Ings still thrives and is well worth a walk. You are asked to stay on the riverside path and enjoy the view, so as not to disturb the nesting birds and other wildlife. Visit www.ywt.org.uk for details.

SUMMER SCREAMING PARTIES

Another wonderful spectacle of June and July is the screaming parties of swifts on summer evenings. Arriving back in Yorkshire in early May, swifts quickly get on with the breeding season, locating their mate (they usually mate for life) and revisiting old nest sites. These nest sites are frequently under the tiles of old roofs or in gaps under eaves and suitable sites can often accommodate a whole colony.

Swifts at evening. Photo: RSPB

Modern houses are mostly unsuitable as they don’t have the gaps and crevices swifts need. This means the sight and sound of swifts are less common around new estates unless of course interested folk have erected swift nestboxes, which the birds will readily use.

Swifts are simply incredible birds. They spend only a few brief months of the year with us, spending the rest of the year completing epic loop migrations through West Africa with some reaching the southern end of the great continent. Even more remarkable is that young birds leaving the nest in an English summer, may not touch down for up to four years when they are ready to breed for the first time. They have evolved to live on the wing, doing everything from feeding and drinking to mating whilst airborne, and almost unbelievably, they are thought to sleep on the wing too. To achieve this remarkable feat, swifts circle up to great altitudes and then rest a half of their brain at a time. Research on frigatebirds, a large piratical seabird from the tropics has proved that this is the method they use to sleep, so it seems quite likely that swifts are able to do this too.

Once breeding is underway, parent swifts travel great distances seeking airborne insect food. They bring this back to feed to the growing chicks who take about six weeks before they are ready to leave the nest. On summer evenings, parties of swifts will often race around the rooftops, calling repeatedly. It is unknown exactly why swifts form these ‘screaming parties’; it may be to a way of maintaining bonds within a colony or perhaps a signal to each other that they are ready to ascend to roost high in the sky. Whatever the reason, it is a quintessential part of our summers and we should all try and do a little bit to help our swifts. To find out more visit www.swift-conservation.org

SPURN POINT THROUGH THE EYES OF ARTISTS

The evocative beauty of the Spurn headland is the inspiration behind a special exhibition at the Sledmere Estate near Driffield which runs until Sunday, writes Stephen Lewis.

The exhibition, 'Surf and Spray, Images of Spurn', is a celebration of a successful season of ‘art safaris’ held on Yorkshire Wildlife Trust’s Spurn National Nature Reserve by Heritage Officer Andrew Mason and the 2016 resident artist, Larry Malkin.

The collection includes the work of over 20 artists, ceramicists and jewellery makers from East Yorkshire, focussing mainly on the Spurn area, Humber region and the Yorkshire Coast. Among the groups represented are Driffield Art Club, East Riding Artists and Hornsea Art Group.

Larr Malkin artwork inspired by Spurn

Larry, from Welwick in East Yorkshire, has worked over many months out of Spurn Lighthouse, recently renovated by Yorkshire Wildlife Trust, capturing the wildly changing moods and history of this unique peninsula in paint and sculpture.

“Artists cannot fail to be inspired by Spurn’s wild, moody atmosphere where the light and land are constantly changing," he says.

“This dynamic quality is reflected in many of the works on display, some of which have been completed on site and others in the studio. Works are in a wide variety of media and sizes, which reflects how the peninsula affects people in different ways.”

One of the intentions of the staff at the reserve is to form a school of art based on Spurn and its wildlife, very much like the artists that worked around Staithes in the Nineteenth century.

Artwork from the 'Surf and Spray' exhibition

“If Staithes could inspire artists all those years ago, think what Spurn can do today," Larry says. "This finger of sand and gravel stretches out precociously into the cold North Sea, daring the elements to sweep it away. The battle between the tides, wind and storm should have carried it away years ago, but still the Point continues. Artists have attempted to portray this conflict in the exhibition, which features Spurn in all its moods and tempers.”

• Surf and Spray, Images of Spurn runs at the Triton Gallery, on the Sledmere Estate near Driffield until Sunday June 25. To attend, contact the Triton Gallery on 01377 236637 or email info@sledmerehouse.com