Bramley Magazine Articles

December 2024: Wilder Bramley looks to the Loddon

“And when tired at last, he sat on the bank, while the river still chattered on to him, a babbling procession of the best stories in the world, sent from the heart of the earth to be told at last to the insatiable sea.”  (Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows.)

Our waterways nurture life and our future depends on keeping them clean. The UK is home to 85% of the world’s chalk streams – ecologically rare and special habitats.  Their pure, constant water, from underground chalk aquifers flows across gravel beds to create ideal habitats to support a huge variety of wildlife and provide protection from flooding.

Our River Loddon is a chalk stream which rises at Basingstoke and travels north until it reaches the Thames.  There are two important local stretches of river which are designated Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI): near Stanford End Mill and Bow Brook, which runs through Bramley.

Our rivers are struggling to thrive due to different types of pollution and we need to help them become healthy again, for nature and for communities.  So over the coming months, Wilder Bramley are starting a collaborative project with Natural Basingstoke and the South East River Trust to survey the water quality of our local rivers. We will keep you updated …

Meanwhile, we were recently treated to a fascinating talk about the Galapagos Islands, given by two Wilder Bramley ecologists, David and Jane Hatter. 

These islands were made famous by Charles Darwin, who first started considering evolution - on which he based his book, The Descent of Man - by looking at the wildlife there. He observed strange and unique creatures, so tame that they did not run away from man. Sadly, this was the downfall of many of the islands’ inhabitants, who were pushed to the brink of extinction and beyond. 

One factor in favour of the Galapagos was their scarcity of water so they never became somewhere that man could colonise effectively. However, they did become a base for whaling ships for around 70 years, as this was an area where several whale species came to feed or breed in the nutrient rich upswellings of ocean currents.

Today there are a number of ecological projects currently underway there and we heard ideas about how some of them could be adapted to help give the wildlife here in Bramley a helping hand.

Volunteer with us! We are currently looking for someone to help our busy Events Manager with the organisation of our talks and events programme. Can you spare around 4 hours a month to help us? If so,  we’d love to hear from you. Please email: wilder.bramley@gmail.com or use our Contact Page

October 2024: Bee Garden gets a mini pond

Mini ponds are incredibly valuable for wildlife and can be home for a range of wildlife, including frogs, newts and dragonflies. They are also a feeding ground for hedgehogs, birds and even bats and provide a year-round source of water. With the decline in wildlife anything that we - or you - can do will aid recovery. Mini ponds certainly help, they are fun to make, cheap and provide enjoyment watching the wildlife come to you. They also provide a home for our friends. So Wilder Bramley have just created one in the Bee Garden!

Our mini pond was entirely sourced from upcycled materials. We used an old Belfast sink that had seen life, first as a sink, and then as a garden planter. Thanks to all who donated materials. 

Why not make your own mini pond? It’s not hard or expensive and the rewards are great. Maybe you have a potential mini pond sitting around: an old wheelbarrow or plant pot perhaps? Be creative, have fun and help nature! A good source of information is: Wild about Gardens Ponds for all.

The new mini pond will soon be gaining some plants.

Wilder Bramley is also trying to establish an understanding of what lives in some of the more natural areas of Bramley and to check whether our management regimes are actually helping to increase or at least maintain the biodiversity, or in other words, trying to give Nature a helping hand.

We are completing a series of surveys throughout the years to establish what flora and fauna already exists and what can be encouraged to return to our meadows. We first started last year and so building on that we returned to Bramley Green in July. 

We surveyed five distinct sites on Bramley Green and for each took six samples with a sweep net to see what we could collect from the vegetation. Our results indicated quite a wide range of invertebrates, including numerous species of different bugs (hemiptera), beetles (coleoptera) and spiders (arachnids). The highlight was finding some Scorpion Bugs (although they are actually arachnids) which, as their name implies, actually look like small scorpions. Interestingly, we found grasshoppers in most areas of the Green but crickets only around the large oak tree.

Another team member sampled the butterfly population. Although the weather this year was grey and cloudy we were delighted to see six cornerstone species in all areas, including a number of the ‘Brown Family’ of butterflies, including meadow brown, gatekeeper, marbled white (up on last year), the Essex skipper that loves to live on vetch, and speckled wood near the oak tree.

To find out more about what we are up to, why not join our Wilder Bramley Facebook page or use our Contact Page.

August 2024: Green surveys around Bramley

Who were those people with clipboards and tapes surveying on Bramley Green recently? Don’t worry, they were not building surveyors, they were members of Wilder Bramley! Over the coming weeks we will be investigating (surveying) the plants, insects and animals living in some of Bramley’s wilder areas. We are trying to see if we can obtain a ‘baseline’ of species present with a view to protecting and helping them to thrive, while encouraging some of the more endangered species to return. Since the 1930s more than 97% of our wildflower meadows have disappeared. Climate change, roads, housing developments and changed farming practices have interrupted forests, fields and hedgerows, endangering some of our favourite creatures such as hedgehogs, sparrows, hazel dormice and toads. Our surveys will help to see what is there and how we can help our wildlife to flourish again. Longer term, we hope to work with other Wilder groups in North East Hampshire in establishing wildlife corridors between our areas. If you would like to know more or be involved, please contact us below.

A small wildlife corridor that we have managed to preserve recently is the long verge along Officers’ Row in Bramley. Working with a group of neighbours and Hampshire County Council, we have managed to get the verge protected from regular mowing so that the rare orchids, lady smock and other important plants identified there can thrive. We also hope to see cowslips, water iris and marsh marigolds blooming before long. If you have a patch of green nearby that you would like to see protected, do get in touch with us. 

Speaking of dormice … did you know that these enigmatic and charming creatures spend as much as 6 months of the year in hibernation? Ian White, dormouse officer from the People’s Trust for Endangered Species (PTES), gave us a fascinating talk about these hazelnut loving creatures recently. Ian described how volunteers are trained to search for nibbled hazel nuts, also checking footprint tunnels and dormouse boxes. Now extinct in many parts of the UK, we have some around Bramley and the PTES is working hard to identify and monitor their remaining strongholds, advising hedgerow and woodland owners on how to help their dormice survive and thrive.

Despite the intermittent drizzle, the Wilder Bramley team of volunteers who maintain the Bee Garden managed to get a lot done in their first work party of the year. Nettles and grass were removed round most of the plants so they have room to grow, and we now have a good display of flowers to help early pollinators.

If you enjoy and appreciate nature, why not head over to our Wilder Bramley Facebook page to find out more, or contact us on wilder.bramley@gmail.com.

July 2004: Bramley’s new Grasslands Meadow Trail

Have you walked across Bramley Green lately? If so, you may have noticed the new ‘Grasslands Meadow Trail’. For the past few years Wilder Bramley have been working closely with the Stratfield Saye Estate and Bramley Parish Council to manage the green as a traditional hay meadow, as it was in historic times. In hay meadows the grass is left uncut or ungrazed during the spring and summer, allowing the grasses to grow long to produce hay, (unlike a pasture where grazing takes place all year round). This management benefits wildlife and biodiversity. Our volunteers have put up signs so you can learn more about the history of the Green as well as what you might see. We’d love to hear about your wildlife experiences on the Green, via facebook or e-mail: wilder.bramley@gmail.com.

We were delighted to meet so many of you visiting our stall at the Bramley Fete. The wildlife quiz was very popular and the lucky winner received a pond starter kit, kindly donated by DH Water Gardens. The cuddly owl and hedgehog in the naming competition now have two great names from their thrilled new owner: Hooty and Spike. See you again next year!

The Great Big Green Week was the UK’s biggest ever celebration of community action to tackle climate change and protect nature. Basingstoke Council helped to promote and coordinate events in the Malls and we teamed up with Wilder Hook and the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust to form a ‘Team Wilder” stall. It was a great opportunity to reach more people, building on our experience at the fete. We had a great response to our wildlife quiz and ‘random acts of wildness’ too, although it was a bit scary to be close to all the skulls and bones presented by Natural Basingstoke! We also networked with other wildlife, conservation and sustainability groups across the borough and swapped ideas. 

We had a very successful Bird and Wildlife Walk recently. Led by the extremely knowledgeable Peter Hutchins of Basingstoke RSPB, fifteen of us had special access to Clappers Farm and then the public footpaths/lanes beyond. High in the skies were many raptors: kestrels, buzzards, red kites and even peregrine. We also saw whitethroat, blackcap and a skylark, many swifts and a live swallows’ nest. Three hares, a rare rose chafer beetle, even, in true SpringWatch style, remains of a greater spotted woodpecker!

You can now support Wilder Bramley in a new way by becoming a formal member, so that we can all help to achieve the objectives of the group: to connect local people who care about nature and to increase the biodiversity of our surroundings. Please visit our new website wilderbramley.org for more details.