Stranger Things too in Nether Poppleton

There are strange goings on in the village of Nether Poppleton, just to the north of York. 

This leafy residential area has been struck in recent weeks by a menace, a pest and a bit of a poser.

The manicured lawns, very much a matter of personal and collective pride around the well maintained and generally above average value houses have been reduced to the state, in some cases of a ploughed field. 

I saw the damage first hand today on the back lawn of a detached house on one of the executive estates that infill between the old cottages and the earlier inter and immediate post war expansion of Nether Poppleton as a popular dormitory for the wider North and West Yorkshire area. 

The home owner apologised for the appearance of his lawn. 

It was scuffed, churned up, divots were strewn around and with bare soil exposed and similarly in a distressed state. 

My joke that a golfer must have had a tantrum whilst practising did not go down well. If it had I would have persisted on the same theme playing on images of a chubby little girl galloping up and down on a dressage pony, a rugby team using the garden for close play tactics, an over enthusiastic and less than diligent metal detectorist and a confused yet well meaning pig in search of elusive truffles. 

There was a seriousness in the man’s voice as he recounted that some of his neighbours and indeed a number of villagers had had to fork out hundreds of pounds to restore their green stuff to its former pristine glory. 

The culprits have been large flocks of wild birds who have descended relentlessly onto the hallowed turf in search of the delicacy that is the Chafer Grub. 

The what? I hear you ask, or at least that was my initial response to this creature as I had never heard of it before. 

Here is the biology, courtesy of the Royal Horticultural Society.

The chafer species most often found damaging lawns are the garden chafer, Phyllopertha horticola, and the welsh chafer, Hoplia philanthus; the latter is particularly found in sandy soils and is not confined to Wales. Adults of P. horticola are about 9mm (3/8in) long and have a metallic green head and thorax with light brown wing cases. Hoplia philanthus is a similar size with a black head and thorax and reddish brown wing cases.Adult chafer beetles feed on the foliage of many plants but are generally not a problem. They will, however, sometimes damage the flowers of roses and other plants. In heavily infested gardens, the adult beetles fly up from turf in large numbers at dusk from late May to June. Eggs are laid in the turf and these hatch a few weeks later. The grubs feed on roots but do not cause significant damage until early autumn, by which time the larvae are becoming fully grown. They overwinter as larvae and pupate in the soil in the spring.Two other species, which are generally less damaging, are the summer chafer (Amphimallon solstitialis) and the brown chafer (Serica brunnea). The latter is generally found in or near wooded areas on sandy soils and is about 9mm long and reddish brown in colour. The summer chafer is light brown, about 16mm long, and distinctly hairy.One species of chafer grub is often found in compost heaps, the larvae of the rose chafer (Cetonia aurata).  This is a species that feeds on decomposing organic matter and as such is a useful garden insect. The adult beetles are about 2 cm (1 inch) long and metallic green. Chafer grubs can  appear similar to the larva of the stag beetle.

The Nether Poppleton experience appears to be particularly bad in that the vandalism is so visible but it appears that there can be other less obvious symptoms of a problem.

Damage to lawns is most obvious between autumn and spring when the grubs are reaching maturity. 

a) Patches of the lawn may become yellowish. 

b) Birds, particularly of the crow family (e.g. jays, magpies, rooks and crows), and badgers and foxes tear up turf in order to access the grubs to feed on them. 

c) Damaging infestations can be highly localised and sporadic.

Unfortunately, nature has dealt a bit of a conundrum to the proud lawn owning residents of Nether Poppleton. On the one hand the Chafer grubs can excavate a lawn on their own and controlling them would be beneficial in the interests of a quality surface. However, there are currently no chemical controls for chafer grubs in lawns which can be applied by home gardeners. 

On the other hand, or should I say, Green fingers, the bird activity in scavenging and munching on the pests inflicts so much more damage. Such is the British love of wild birds that there is also little scope for action which might result in avian injury or fatalities. 

This will fuel conversations over the hedge and in the Village Shop for some time to come.