Littleton Meadows
This site is divided into four areas consisting of two flood meadows, a grassy bank and a scrub-covered bank.
The two floodplain meadows known as Short Dole & Ox Meadow, make up the largest area of the site and in the past were characteristic flower-rich floodplain meadows but they had been agriculturally improved. Hay cutting and grazing will reduce the fertility over time and wildflowers are spreading across the meadows once again. A bank rises east out of the floodplain below Windmill Hill nature reserve (WWT), known as Meadow Bank which has patches of Black Knapweed, Cowslips, Salad Burnet and Ladies Bedstraw with occassional Wooly Thistle. A continuation of the bank northwards called Rough Hill (or Hill Rough) has become covered in dense, high scrub. |
The two meadows are surrounded by hedges and ditches and there is a seasonal pond in the south-western corner of Ox Meadow which is over-shadowed by a large Crack Willow. There is also a dew pond on the east side of Short Dole which abuts Rough Hill. This small pond has breeding dragonflies but is prone to silting up and so occasionally part of the pond is de-silted to keep some open water. This pond has breeding dragonflies including Broad-bodied Chaser and Four-spotted Chaser. The two main fields are managed as hay meadows, being cut in July, leaving an uncut margin around the edge to allow wildflowers to seed and insects to breed. The fields are then grazed by cattle in the late summer and early autumn. Meadow Buttercups are dominant but an ancient raised track runs east/west across Short Dole and this has Bulbous Buttercup as the dominant species. Lady’s Bedstraw is also common around the meadow and Black Knapweed and Great Burnet are present but rare, a reminder of the fact that this site once had an MG4 floodplain grassland community.
Rough Hill was once open grassland with a few scattered trees. Some of these 150 – 200 year-old English Oaks are still present but scrub has grown up since the 1980s creating a different habitat type of high scrub. Rides are being cut through and some of the Hawthorn and Ash are being coppiced to allow grasses and wildflowers to grow again, increasing habitat diversity. A few Pyramidal and Common Spotted Orchids that were known to be present in the 1990s have already returned. Other plants that have recolonised the bank include Hairy Saint-John’s-wort, Hairy Violet and Woolly Thistle, all characteristic of calcareous soils. The sheltered conditions within the scrub are ideal for many insects including Speckled Wood butterfly, Dark and Speckled Bush-crickets and various hoverflies. The rides offer ideal conditions for dragonflies to hunt other flying insects.
There are signs that Badgers forage along the bank and Muntjac Deer have been seen occasionally, while Roe Deer are known to breed here. The bank was re-fenced in 2016 to implement a grazing regime to improve the wildflower community; cattle graze the bank after July until November and then sheep graze through the winter. This management has increased the wildflowers on the bank and butterflies are abundant in summer. Meadow Brown and Marbled White are common here along with Large, Small and Essex Skipper (the road verge above the bank was the first recorded site for this species in Worcestershire). In 2020 Dark Green Fritilary butterflies were present on Meadow Bank. |