A Natural History of Sutton Park

Introduction

Sutton Park is an area of about 970 hectares (2,400 acres) in the Sutton Coldfield district of Birmingham. It is located in the north of Birmingham, centred roughly at National Grid Reference SP100970 (sketch map, more detailed map [204K]). Sutton Coldfield was formerly an independent town within Warwickshire, so the Park falls into Vice-county 38 (Warwickshire) for biological recording purposes.

Most of the park has never been cultivated, and is a mixture of woodland and heath with a number of streams and man-made pools. The heaths and bogs are now a rare habitat in the Midlands and support plants and animals not found in the surrounding areas. The park is a National Nature Reserve, managed by Birmingham City Council under a management plan agreed between the council and English Nature.

For more general information about Sutton Park, see the .

Starting in about 1988, Peter Coxhead and Harold Fowkes (now sadly deceased) have been engaged on a project to document the natural history of Sutton Park. The work is being published as a series of booklets by the under the general title A Natural History of Sutton Park. Much of the work has consisted of collating existing records, particularly those held by the Biological Records Centre, Warwick Museum. Many other people have contributed their time and expertise, including George and Maurice Arnold (birds), Stefan Bodnar (birds, vertebrates), Malcolm Clark and members of the Birmingham Natural History Society Mycolological Section (fungi), Les Evans (butterflies and moths), Steven Falk and colleagues from Coventry (insects), John Field (bryophytes), Wayne Rixom (spiders) and John Walton (lichens).

Drawing of a Weasel by Natalie Walker, to appear in Part 4: Animals

Checklists on the Web

The checklists:

are generated more-or-less automatically from the main databases from which the booklets were prepared
are updated whenever the main databases are updated, so are usually contain more recent records than the booklets
give only the species name and the date of the last record in the database -- for more detailed information, buy the booklets!

Key to symbols in the checklists The date of the last record generally consists of a year followed by a letter, with the meaning:

=	Year is exact.
~	Year is approximate. For example, a record in the original as "in the 1920s" will be entered as "1925~". The uncertainty is usually less than ±10 years.
-	Record is before this year. This symbol is used particularly when records have been taken from a previous checklist in which they are undated. The record is usually within 10 years before the given year.
+	Record is after this year. The record is usually within 10 years after the given year.
nd	No date is known. This has been avoided wherever possible.
dub.	We consider the record dubious for some reason. The editors' decision is final but should not be interpreted as reflecting adversely on the recorder.

Some checklists have a 'status' column, with the codes:

P	Believed to be Present
M	May be present, status unclear
L	Believed to be Lost, i.e. no longer occurring in the Park
D	Record considered Doubtful (generally not listed online)
I	Name Invalid (generally not listed online)

Symbols after a synonym (such as *) should be ignored. (They are cross-references within the original database.)

Checklists currently available online have links below. NOTE: some of these checklists could be quite large files.

Fungi	Fungi, including Lichens -- from Part 2
Plants	Bryophytes (mosses and liverworts) -- from Part 2
Plants	Vascular Plants (ferns to flowering plants) -- from Part 1
Invertebrates	Arachnids (mostly spiders) -- from Part 4 (in preparation)
	Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths) -- from Part 4 (in preparation)
	Diptera (true flies) -- from Part 4 (in preparation)
	Insects other than Lepidoptera and Diptera -- from Part 4 (in preparation)
	Invertebrates other than those above -- from Part 4 (in preparation)
Vertebrates	Birds -- from Part 3
Vertebrates	Other Vertebrates (fish, amphibians, reptiles, mammals) -- from Part 4 (in preparation)

Any additional records will be very gratefully received. For my address, see my home page or you can e-mail me via . Species name, group, date and name and address of the recorder are essential; a location within the Park is useful. Any records, however common the species, are useful in order to keep the database up-to-date.


(Above) Drawing of a Wheatear by Vanessa Nixon, from A Natural History of Sutton Park -- Part 3: Birds
(Right) Drawing of the Round-leaved Sundew by Harold Fowkes, from Part 1: Vascular Plants

Booklets

Three booklets in the series A Natural History of Sutton Park are currently available:

Part 1: Vascular Plants
Part 2: Fungi, Lichens and Bryophytes
Part 3: Birds

Each booklet is A5 size, professionally printed with a laminated card cover, and includes:

an introduction to each group described in the booklet
a checklist of species found in Sutton Park, both now and in the past
an index to the checklist(s)
black-and-white illustrations.

The booklets can be bought from the Visitor Centre in Sutton Park. Alternatively, print out the order form and post it to me (the address is on the form).

Talk on Sutton Park

Peter Coxhead is available to talk about Sutton Park -- see his .