Biodiversity and Wildlife

Biodiversity and Wildlife in Nethercote

Nethercote provides natural habitat for wildlife and birds; we see the wildlife on a regular basis but there is no officially recorded data on biodiversity or any wildlife records for the area of Nethercote. Biodiversity is the variety of plant and animal life. Surveying and recording biodiversity can provide valuable information about habitats, plants, animals and natural processes in an area. Information such as the presence of species and habitats, the condition of habitats and the size of wildlife populations can be useful to Identify protected areas and protected species and ensure that they are not adversely affected by human actions.

A BioBlitz is an event that focuses on finding and identifying as many species as possible in a specific area. A Nethercote Bioblitz has been established in iRecord that everyone, both residents, visitors and passers through can contribute to in order to build up accurate data that can be used to help protect our Nethercote wildlife in the future! All information captured and verified will be added to the National Biodiversity Network official records

Visitors can also contribute on iNaturalist, all records entered into here will import across into iRecord for official verification. Prior to visiting Nethercote, if you enable the location setting in your camera, then when you return home, you can easily upload what you have seen & the app will automatically timestamp and GPS locate your record making it much easier to upload when you get home.

Banbury Lane runs throughout Nethercote and is just under a mile in total from the A422 to Overthorpe Road.  The small, winding, quaint lane has hedgerow running adjacent on both sides, the whole area is surrounded by hedgerow, plus there are numerous hedges running within the fields of the area.  Development of this area would therefore see many miles of hedgerow ripped out and lost forever.  The hedgerow in the area meets criteria that makes it legally protected under the Hedgerow Regulations Act and legally defines the hedgerow as an “important” hedge.

• Hedges mimic the rich structure of a woodland edge, and have overlapping elements of woodland, scrub and pasture – enabling them to be home to many species from all these habitats
  • Some species need ALL these elements to survive, the area of Nethercote is home to Song thrush (which has been in severe decline), which sings from the hedge trees, nests in the protection of the hedge structure, eats worms and snails from the hedge base, before moving to hedge berries later in the year.
  • This habitat structure is broadly analogous of what we think prehistoric wildwood of the UK would have been like – lots of scrub, open grown trees, grazed pasture and wood, all kept in flux through herbivore driven succession. This is what our ecology adapted to and why this ‘man-made’ habitat is so wildlife rich.
  • Hedges have 3 main roles for wildlife
    • 1) a physical home (dormice, hedgehogs, birds, insects etc)
    • 2) a complementary habitat, providing shelter and food for species that may or may not live in the hedge and
    • 3) wildlife corridors to help connect populations across the countryside (dormice, bats, hedgehogs, butterflies)

WE WILL BE RUNNING A HEDGEROW SURVEY IN THE SPRING!  This will enable the age of the hedgerow to be approximated!