Roadside verges

Following on from a post made by Paul Talbot back in June (reproduced below) I have now received copies of maps showing the areas of roadside verge currently considered of value, I'm sure there will be local birders who know of other areas worthy of late cutting. If anyone who wants copies of these maps drop me an E mail and I'll post them on (I'm afraid I don't have them in electronic form), any new areas will be passed onto the Council via Hugh Firman.




Hugh Firman, Andy Cockroft and myself did a very quick survey yesterday of some of the upland verges I mentioned in a previous posting to this forum. The consensus was that we need to flag up all suitable verges within around 2 k of any known Twite breeding sites for further surveys to see if Sorrel is present. We managed to flag up a considerable area yesterday simply by driving round the sites and noting down which verges had a good amount of Sorrel and seeding grasses. The hope is that we can arrange through liaison with highways and grass cutting at Calderdale Council to have these verges left as late as possible in the annual cutting regime. It should be possible if we can get some standardised maps printed out for people to look over a few verges whilst out and about and simply mark up ones they think would be suitable for the cutting plan. I think its most important to concentrate on the MINOR road verges as its much more difficult to slow up cuts on main roads due to the safety implications about overgrown verges on these roads. We must have hundreds of miles of mini-nature reserves and corridors in Calderdale just on the minor road verges ! It should be easy enough for anyone out and about birding around the area to note down suitable verges without going out on a special trip to do so, as between us we must cover most of Calderdale weekly.