We recently held a Minibeast Hunt event for the local community at our Waterhouse Mill development in East Cheshire, where children and adults all joined in to help identify the wildlife in their local area. Meadfleet’s Ecology and Conservation Manager Paul led the event, with help from members of the Waterhouse Mill Residents’ Association. We began by searching for insects found using the variety of native and ornamental shrubs on the public open space.
Shrubs such as buddleia were still in bloom and were attracting butterflies to feed on the nectar, with comma, peacock and red admiral butterflies seen. Dragonflies common darter and migrant hawker were also seen hunting invertebrates above the shrubs and beneath the canopy of the trees. We then moved on to a shallow bend in the River Dean, where we used nets to catch animals in the water.
As well as sweeping the nets in the water we used the kick sampling technique to find animals sheltering in the rocks and gravel of the shallow river bed. A variety of animals were found, from bloodworms and leeches to stonefly larvae and even a bullhead fish.
The children and adults in attendance used field guides to identify the animals caught, before carefully returning them to the river. It was a pleasure to see people so enthused by discovering the wildlife sharing their local environment. The public open spaces on this development lend themselves to such an event, with a mosaic of habitats all easily accessible. At Meadfleet we take a biodiversity-led approach to the management and maintenance of our developments, and as part of this we want to encourage our residents and local schools and communities to connect with the nature and wildlife on their doorstep.
Our Ecology Team love to help our customers, schools and community groups to learn more about the nature and wildlife in their local area, and we are always looking for new groups to work with – please visit our Community page for more information.
About Meadfleet
Meadfleet are a leading sustainable land-adopting management company. We have in-house ecologists with expertise in the BNG metric and are already applying the principles of Biodiversity Net Gain across our existing open space portfolio in England and Wales. Established in 1995, Meadfleet manage over 330 developments and 42,000 residential properties in our portfolio, with a strong balance sheet.
Meadfleet offers management of Biodiversity Net Gain delivery both on a managed development and on offsite areas, either via customer contributions or commuted sums. Our adoption model relieves developers of ongoing liabilities and management costs.
The Meadfleet model removes onerous liabilities from homeowners yet still encourages their input and engagement into the management of their local environment. We are committed to providing an excellent service to residents as demonstrated by our Excellent rating on Trustpilot and are members of The Property Ombudsman Scheme (TPOS), offering customers free, independent redress should they feel it is required. We are happy to work with residents groups and positively encourage the creation of these on the developments we are involved with. We believe this opens an effective two-way dialogue between homeowners and ourselves.
As a land-adopting management company, Meadfleet take long-term responsibility of open space, building customer and community relations and implementing perpetual management and improvement plans. We take a holistic and independent approach to managing areas of open space for the benefit of all residents, biodiversity and the wider environment.