East Park
Animal Education
Details:
Walkers: Beth Ellerby and Emma Burdon Length : 466m Time: 20mins Altitude: 25m
East Park is a large parkland area in the city of Hull. The centre is dedicated to animal life with live birds and animals in enclosures and to education. It is also part of teh butterfly city project which aims at connecting people in Hull with nature, showing people how easy it is for us all to take positive action to improve our local environment for both ourselves and nature habitats include parkland and ornamental plants and semi unimprovedacidic grassland some of which is used by the animlas
Sections:
Results 2023:
County wide 2023 results reflect the 2022 and 2023 spring drought with Small Tortoiseshell and Peacock nearly halved for the second year against their 5 year average. Red Admiral arrived in force in July and took advantage of soft nettle growth of the rains and had their best year ever. Drought sensitive species on thin soils were badly hit, particularly Dark -green Fritillary and Northern Brown Argus but also Ringlet, Green-viened White and Small Heath. Less drought affected species along with the hottest June on record built even more on gains last year leading to Comma, Brimstone, Holly Blue and most Browns having a fantastic year reaching all time highs. A increase of 9% overall was mostly due to sheer numbers of Meadow Browns and Gatekeepers ment 2023 nearly pipped 2014 as best year in modern times. Most noticeable was the large differeces between mositure retaining mineral soils of the valleys and thin, dry limestone or sandy soils. A large number of damp grassland, hedgerow and woodland dominated sites benefitted hugely with 3 sites seeing more than 50% increase . A smaller number of thin, chalky, sandy or craggy sites did badly some down up to 25%.
2023 in East Park brings a noticeable large increase in numbers which exceeds county trends. Speckled Woods follow county trends in having a superb year almost universally to their best year ever. Great to see Peacock and Tortoiseshell also increasing as they have had two very poor years reacting very badly to 2022 heat and spring 2023 drought. Also of interest is the Holly Blue which had a stonking year reaching also an all time high.
Of Course Red Admiral stole the show with nearly two thirds of the annual total increase due solely to them . They enjoyed the rains and soft young nettle growth to have a bumper summer and also reach their highest numbers since the 1990's.