As part of a Tees Valley Wildlife Trust’s partnership with Middlesbrough Community Learning, Thursday 16th June will see the final free one day course for beginners interested in learning more about the natural history of their local area. The course will be concentrating on the wild flowers, butterflies and dragonflies found on Maze Park.
With its glades and open grassland within the reserve it has attracted at least 13 species of butterfly including the increasingly scarce grayling and dingy skipper. We will also be taking a close look at any skippers we find to see if they are Essex Skippers. These butterflies are recent colonisers they had not been recorded in the Tees Valley until last year. When to the surprise of Ian Waller and Mike Hunter discovered them whist doing a butterfly survey. There origin is under much speculation since the nearest colony is over 80 miles away!
Maze Park is a hidden gem, especially for butterflies. Most people’s only knowledge of the reserve is when the drive over the Tees Viaduct and see the 3 mounds on the south bank of the Tees. The Maze Park site was acquired by the Teesside Development Corporation in the late 1980’s and was used to deposit the reclaimed substrates and soils from their reclamation of the extensive Head Wrightson works in Thornaby for the construction of the Teesdale business park. The landscaping of these waste materials formed the mounds which dominate Maze Park today.
The central mound is flat-topped and its plateau consists of the characteristic steelworks slag materials, presumably originating from the Thornaby blast furnace. The steelworks waste is lime-rich, low in nutrients and free-draining and its nearest natural equivalent would be chalk grasslands or base-rich sand dunes systems. Typically they contain an abundance of herb species including yellow wort, black medick, common centaury and bird’s-foot trefoil. These grasslands form an open sward with patches of bare ground and are also noted for supporting two species of butterfly that have suffered significant declines across Britain – the grayling and dingy skipper.
For more information about the course visithttp://www.teeswildlife.org/events/ to book contact the Trust on 01287636382 or info@teeswildlife.org.