Colwall Orchard Group

Woodpeckers

Orchards are great nesting and feeding places for woodpeckers.  Orchards in and around Colwall have all three British woodpeckers:  Green, Lesser Spotted and Great Spotted.

Herefordshire Biodiversity Partnership is running a project to map the distribution of woodpeckers in Herefordshire.  Colwall Orchard Group is helping with this survey and we have installed some special nest boxes in and around our orchards.

Click the picture to read more detail. 

Herefordshire Biodiversity Partnership

Wildlife conservation is co-ordinated across the UK through Biodiversity Partnerships.  The Herefordshire partnership has defined key actions required to conserve, enhance and restore our wildlife habitats and species in their Herefordshire Biodiversity Action Plan (BAP).  The BAP partners catalyse, oversee and report on action to deliver the targets in this plan.

Orchards are ‘Priority’ BAP habitats with their own Habitat Action Plan.  Colwall Orchard Group is one of the ‘BAP partners’ working to conserve orchards and the animals that depend on them.

Noble chafer beetle

The Noble Chafer beetle is a ‘Priority’ BAP species with its own ‘Species Action Plan’.  We started Colwall Orchard Group with a survey for this beetle, in association with the

people’s trust for endangered species.

We found one site, and many more very suitable habitats.  We hope to do a search for these large colourful adults when they emerge from the trees in July (opportunity for working parties will be on members' pages). Read more.  

Mistletoe tortrix moth

This small, but pretty, moth lives exclusively on mistletoe.  Its caterpillar lives inside the leaves, leaving feeding trails known as leaf mines.  The moth is very rare, with most sightings from the Three Counties and down in Somerset.

Moth experts surveyed for leaf mines in five orchards in 2010.  They found drew a blank in two of the orchards, but in the other three orchards found leaf mines in 1, 3 and 7 trees respectively. 

Read more.

Other moths

There are many other moths living in and on our orchard trees, such as this Grey Dagger, the caterpillars of which feed on apple and cherry.

Our moth trapping event last year was rained off, but we hope to get out in the orchards with our moth trap this year – see members pages for more information.  If anyone is interested in borrowing the trap to run in any of the orchards, please get in touch with Helen or Tim.

Larva of the Cobweb beetle

Other bugs and beasties

Colwall Orchards are ‘amongst the best known in England’ for bugs and beasties that live on dead wood  – so says foremost expert Dr Keith Alexander after his recent survey of local orchards. 

Often overlooked, many fascinating creatures live in dead wood in the trees, in crevices in the bark and amongst lichens, fungi, leaves and flowers on the trees.  Come and learn more on our Blossom Picnic bug hunt!