Our new toy gets to work

This week at Stagbury saw the debut of the latest addition to our range of tools, a wheeled power strimmer, courtesy of Andy Keay. This was used to cut back the thatch of coarse grass threatening to overwhelm the patch of Horseshoe Vetch that is home to our population of ChalkHill Blue butterflies. We visit this spot regularly in the summer as part of our butterfly transect.
With the volunteers taking turns with the new machine, a morning’s work with the strimmer and rakes cleared the top growth of this invasive grass, as you can see from Duncan’s photos. This will allow more light and space for the Horseshoe Vetch to thrive. We’ll be carrying on the work on the rest of this area next week.