Pruning of trees and shrubs on slopes around Albrechtův vrch continues, and at the beginning of December, in addition to our chainsaws, also supplier’s tractor equipped with milling cutter fought with the overgrown jungle.
At the end of November, the last mowing of grasslands took place at Dívčí Hrady. The uncut strips (from summer) were cut. If we left old biomass unremoved, nutrients accumulate and vegetation becomes homogeneous. Mowing can efficiently support a variety of small herbs and less competitive grass species. This will help to support diverse insect species.
At the beginning of winter, we turned on our chainsaws, a brushcutter and we started carving tree and shrub species on the overgrown slopes of Albrechtův vrch. The aim of the intervention is to remove almost 75% of the trees and shrubs to create semi-open habitats with a forest-steppe vegetation structure. This will support several butterfly species and other groups of arthropods that need open habitats. During the following years, we will maintain these areas by performing mosaic mowing, and hopefully also by introducing goats and sheep to graze.
At the beginning of October, we borrowed a sowing machine and created several small patches at Albrechtův vrch. We then sowed a mixture of nectar-rich plants in these patches by hand to provide butterflies and other pollinators with more food during the growing season.
For the third and last time (this year), we mowed vegetation and removed biomass from sainfoin patches. We applied hand mowing due to the small size of the patches and to keep resources for pollinators in the close surrounding of mown areas.
At the beginning of September, the third strip mowing of meadows at Na Rovinách took place. The uncut strips are full of pink blossoms of sainfoin. Further management action took place in forest-steppe stands near Albrechtův vrch, where another meadow area was mown using a mosaic pattern and biomass was removed.
Due to the unfavourable weather forecast, we had to change the date of the excursion at the last minute. Nevertheless, a number of children and adults interested in butterflies and other invertebrates arrived. With great enthusiasm, they started to hunt butterflies with nets, and collected individuals were identified by experts and supplemented with interesting facts about the species biology. We made a short talk about our projects for adults, and some of them joined the marking of rock graylings after the official end of the excursion. Secrets of the butterfly developmental cycle were introduced to children, using real animals (we observed pupation). The bravest then took the living caterpillars at home for feeding and observation.
We finished the last insect and spider sampling at Dívčí hrady and Na Rovinách. During autumn and winter, we have to process samples and send sorted insects to specialists for identification to the species level.
On August 10, we tried our newly purchased brush cutter and started with a mosaic-like mowing of forest-steppe stands in the meadow areas at Albrechtův vrch. As the name suggests, mowing is performed in the shape of a mosaic – some places remain uncut so that residents from mown places can move there. After some time, unmown patches are mown as well.
At Dívčí hrady, halves of the sainfoin patches were mowed with the aim of rejuvenating the patch (initiate repeated blooming) and, at the same time, mosaic-like mowing was carried out in the surrounding grassland matrix.
