Canal, Butterfly Meadow & Potter Pits. 22 June

Canal 1

Even on the walk down the snicket, which has the grand name of Junction Road, there was something to see. Nettles, Brambles and Buddleia are growing down there and I spotted a Blue Tailed Damselfly, a female Banded Demoiselle and a Pebble Hook-tip Moth (Drepana falcataria). The Ladybirds were on plants on the edge of the canal.

I didn’t spend long on the canal because the main purpose of my visit was to have another look around Potters Pits. So I crossed over at the footbridge near Boatmans Wharfe. There are quite a few House Sparrows along there.

Potter Pits

I don’t know how much more work is to be done on platform 4 of the station, parts of the car park are still being used as the worker’s yard and it is surrounded by fencing, but there is still access on foot under the bridge to get through to Potters Pits. Often, when going into Potters Pits I hear Song Thrush and Wrens in the trees on the left, between the path and the beck. On this visit I saw and heard several Long Tailed Tits. This one looks as though it is still growing the feathers on its head.

On this visit there was noticeably more Bird’s Foot Trefoil in flower and the bees and butterflies liked it. There were a lot of Ringlet butterflies, a good few Meadow Brown, a good few White butterflies but don’t ask me which kind, several Small Tortoiseshell. But the ones I enjoyed looking out for were the Skippers, both Large and Small, and the Burnet Moths. I am never quite sure if they appear in waves because for a while you don’t see any, neither Skipper nor Burnet moth, but then you start seeing lots of them. Burnet Moths were mating and others had only just emerged from their cocoons, leaving behind the pupal case.

While still looking for Burnet Moth cocoons I noticed a web in the grass. I was still thinking of moths so wondered if the web was from a moth caterpillar and started looking for caterpillars under it and then noticed the decent sized Nursery Web Spider (Pisaura mirabilis) near the bottom of the web. The next stop was the butterfly meadow at Shipley Station.

Butterfly Meadow

Burnet Moths, Large Skippers, and Ringlets were spotted in the meadow, as were a couple of Whites. Even when I have a decent photo of some white butterflies I am not sure what variety they are, so a butterfly flitting around more than 3 or 4 metres away is just going to be called White. I spotted a couple of Cocoons that were still protecting a pupa.

It is great to see Burnet Moths and Skippers but one of the reasons for visiting Shipley Station, the butterfly meadow and the land between platform 5 and the car park, is the hope of seeing Common Blue Butterflies or Marbled Whites. Bradford Urban Wildlife Group and Yorkshire Butterfly Conservation are hoping to spend more time managing the plants that grow there, encouraging the ones liked by Common Blue. I think a better path is planned too. Visitors can then be more confident that they are not disturbing the habitat.

After the Butterfly Meadow I spent some time looking at the waste ground on Briggate where the Glenroyal cinema used to be. The plants that grow there have been cut down a few times and I assume the reason is so that the large screen on the end of the building there can be seen by motorists. I didn’t see much there other than Buddleia, Thistles and lots of drinks cans, plastic paint tubs and bricks. It could be another nice area for wild life. It could even be grassed to continue from the junction. One problem might be that the cinema had a cellar that went down to the level of the canal. The walls can be seen from the canal.

Canal 2

The walls of the Glenroyal cinema building that are next to the canal have had Sand Martins nesting in them. I posted photos 3/4 of the way down an Easter Weekend post. And just to the right of the cinema wall is a wall that has Cotoneaster & Senecio tumbling down it that looks good. I don’t know if canal boats have not been moving much on the canal recently but the water looks a lot clearer and the plants growing in the water are clearly visible and healthy. In previous years I had seen lots of Ragwort in Potters Pits with Cinnabar Moth caterpillars chomping away on it, as in this post – Potter Pits on Tuesday. This year there seems to be very little Ragwort but there is plenty along the canal towpath. And some of it is teeming with Cinnabar Moth caterpillars.

It was interesting to note that on the same plant the variation in size of the caterpillars was quite marked. Some were tiny, others were getting on for full size. Some plants had been stripped yet others had no signs of caterpillars.

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The images are published under the Creative Commons, BY-NC-SA license. Feel free to share them, edit them, but please keep my name in the credits. And if I have got the ID of anything wrong please let me know, I don’t consider myself an expert but I have write something. It is often a best guess and it would take up too much room to say It could be this, or it could be… or perhaps.