Biodiversity on Stourbridge Common
Stourbridge Common is surprisingly biodiverse, having river, fast flowing stream, still water, water meadow, and hedgerow, as well as mature trees.
The main grassland consists of a wide variety of grasses including Tufted Hair grass, Crested Dog’s Tail, Red Fescue and Cock’s-foot. There are occasional wildflower species such as Strawberry Clover and Lady’s Smock.
The wetter areas, with seasonal standing water, have wet grassland communities including Hairy Sedge and the rare Round-fruited Rush. The water attracts frogs and common newts, which are prey for grass snakes. Kingfishers and heron are regular visitors. Winter flooding brings snipe and woodcock, with the trees home to woodpecker, jay, and magpies. Kestral can be seen hunting shrews and voles.
The railway embankment is home to common lizards. In summer, the grass is full of crickets and grasshoppers, skipper, meadow brown and small tortoiseshell butterflies.
Twenty species of dragon/damsel fly have been recorded over the past few years on Stourbridge Common and Fen Ditton meadows. It hoped that creating some shallow ponds will enable frogs to breed successfully and thus increase the biodiversity further.
Many thanks to Jeff Stenning for his wonderfully comphrehensive list of all the dragon and damselflies found around Stourbridge Common and Ditton Meadows between 2005 and 2010.
A report (December 2013) by the Wildlife Trust is available Here.
2x Tawny Owl boxes and 1 Kestrel are now up and the Nature Conservation Officer reports that he flushed a snipe from the largest scrape when he visited recently!
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