Wildflower meadows can bring so much joy, from the bounty of beautiful flowers, the movement of the magnificent grasses to enjoying the bees, butterflies, birds, bats and beetles that make it their home. However, an important part of being a good meadow manager is cutting the vegetation back during the autumn to maintain the diversity (which all that wildlife depends on) the following year. As a result, between the months of September and April, wildflower meadows can seem eerily quiet places, containing little more than closely cut grass. Read on to find out what’s really lurking within the meadow during the wintertime, and learn how the wildlife survives through the coldest months of the year.
Small mammals
Bees
Wild bumblebee populations survive the winter by investing all their hopes and dreams in just one individual – the queen bee. Queen bee’s feed up on nectar and pollen at the end of the summer to ensure that they are able to lay many eggs when they emerge the following spring, but before that they need to find somewhere safe and protected to survive the winter; areas of loose soil, banks of earth, holes in rotten logs and loose tree bark all provide perfect hibernation sites.
Birds
Many of the birds that feed in the meadow during the summer time survive the winter by flying to warmer climate. The swallows that spend long summer days swooping over our meadow in Scotland catching flying insects, leave in October to travel all the way to Africa where they’ll spend the winter, flying all the way back come the spring to bring up their young.
Bats
Sunset is a great time to see bats flying over the meadow during the summer. They tend to forage around the edges of the meadow, enjoying the abundance of moths that make the meadow their home. Between the months of November and April, the bats will hibernate in hollow trees and the farm buildings that surround the meadow, allowing their body temperature and metabolic rate to drop and surviving on stored fat reserves.
Beetles
The meadow is full of beetles of all shapes and sizes during the summer, enjoying the abundance of food in the form of leaves, seed, pollen and nectar. During the winter, beetles will enter a state of diapause (a state of arrested development), and seek out places of shelter, such as the bases of tussocky grasses. For this reason, we always leave parts of the meadow (especially around the edges) uncut.
Butterlies and moths
During the summer the meadow supports an abundance butterfly and moth species, such as Meadow Browns, Common Blues, Red Admirals and Small Coppers where they feed on nectar. After an often short life span (e.g. Common Blue butterflies only live for 3 weeks), they will find a good spot to lay their eggs (usually close to or on the caterpillars food plant). From these eggs, caterpillars emerge, which will enter a state of dormancy to see out the winter. We try to maintain lots of areas within the Seilich meadow for these species to tuck themselves in to, such as areas of loose soil, leaf litter and grassy tussocks, so that come the spring, we will once again see an abundance of life flitting among the flowers!