Stockbridge Down is one of my favourite local nature reserves.
There are amazing views of farmland and villages below with soaring red kites and buzzards above and greater for rare wildflowers, butterflies and moths.
The site is a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI), managed by The National Trust as a grassland site for rare wildflowers, butterflies, and moths. These include the very charismatic and rare Silver-spotted skipper butterfly. On a really hot summer day, you often see the occasional migrant clouded yellow butterfly zip past very fast.
Chalk-hill blue butterflies
The site also has our nearest sustainable colony of chalk-hill blue butterflies that have been long missing from Andover, despite a local pub bearing this name.
At the top of the site are the remains of Woolbury Hill Fort. The ditches and trenches create great refuges for wildflowers and results in providing ample opportunities to see the surprisingly colourful and powerful dark-green fritillary butterfly.
Gin and Juniper
Gin-lovers will be pleased to see the occasional juniper bush, which is of high conservation priority.
Colourful and unusual flowers include clustered bellflower and round-headed rampion, an increasing hard-to-see plant, and viper’s bugloss, a plant that no bee can refuse to nectar on.
Rare butterflies
The short grass allows the bright yellow flowers of horseshoe vetch to poke through. Crucially the sole food plant of the chalk-hill blue butterfly. Equally important for this decreasing butterfly are the anthills on site because ants take the butterfly larvae into their nests where they ‘milk’ them for sugars and protect them.
Lizards
The site is one of the best locally for seeing common lizards. They often use the horse riding tracks to bask in the summer sun. Be quick or you’ll miss them!
A great site for a hot sunny day!
Don’t forget to see what might be happening in the countryside this month in The Almanac Index.