Southerscales YWT
Ingleborough
Site Description
Recorders: Roger Neale Distance: 2210m Walk Time Approx : 30 mins
This stunning nature reserve is perched on the west side of Ingleborough. It is particularly important for its large areas of spectacular limestone pavement. The cracks, or grykes as they are known, hide a wide variety of special lime-loving plants. The limestone grassland surrounding it is full of butterflies in the spring and summer.
Sections:
S1 starts at Southerscale farm heading up teh slope through grassy meadow area .
S2 reachs the base of teh pavement and teh highest counts and the favourite area to see Common Blue Dark -green Fritillary and Small Heath .
S3 is also good for the fritillaries
S4 has similar but much lower numbers of meadow brown.
S6 sees an increase in numbers particularly Fritillaries that continues to S8
Results: 2022
A dramatic year with the arrival of orange Tip, Smmall Skipper and green hairstreaks return along with a boom in many species lifted counts 75%! In general teh site is showing a strong increase after some very poor years 2016-17 2022 could be a record breaker
Green viened white had its best year so far and Common Blue continued to improve on last year to its best year so far Migrant vanessids were good but after teh huge boom in tortoiseshell the two years numbers dropped by two thirds. Dark green fritillary although well down on its on its peak last year is holding up well. The Browns boomed with meadow brown teh biggest wiinner of all accounting for two thirds of all teh improvements jumped near three fold. Smal heath was slightly down on last year but still very much on teh increase
Results: 2021
Counts generally improved. Most noticeable were increased Common Blue, Small Heath and Meadow Brown which nearly doubled.
Other species were fairly stable and Dark-green Fritillary may have slightly increased.