page_title: RSPB Dearne Valley Old Moor
section_title: Other animals and plants
hierarchical_section_title: RSPB Dearne Valley Old Moor / Fauna and flora / Other animals and plants
caption_attribution_description: English: RSPB Old Moor ... it's got wings, but it isn't a bird&#160;! A Brown Hawker (Aeshna grandis) dragonfly egg-laying on one of the Old Moor ponds.
context_page_description: RSPB Dearne Valley Old Moor is an 89-hectare wetlands nature reserve in the Dearne Valley near Barnsley, South Yorkshire, run by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. It lies on the junction of the A633 and A6195 roads and is bordered by the Trans Pennine Trail long-distance path. Following the end of coal mining locally, the Dearne Valley had become a derelict post-industrial area, and the removal of soil to cover an adjacent polluted site enabled the creation of the wetlands at Old Moor.
  Old Moor is managed to benefit bitterns, breeding waders such as lapwings, redshanks and avocets, and wintering golden plovers. A calling male little bittern was present in the summers of 2015 and 2016. Passerine birds include a small colony of tree sparrows and good numbers of willow tits, thriving here despite a steep decline elsewhere in the UK.
  Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Council created the reserve, which opened in 1998, but the RSPB took over management of the site in 2003 and developed it further, with funding from several sources including the National Lottery Heritage Fund.
context_section_description: Lesser noctule bats and water voles figure among the scarcer mammals found on the reserve, and otters have returned to the now-clean rivers. Other mammal species targeted for monitoring during the creation process include the brown hare and the pipistrelle.
  The alder leaf beetle, formerly believed extinct in the UK, has colonised the Dearne and other local river catchments, probably introduced when the pollution-tolerant Italian alder was planted on restored land. Other uncommon insects found at Old Moor include the great silver water beetle, the longhorn beetle Pyrrhidium sanguineum, the dingy skipper butterfly, and a day-flying moth, the six-belted clearwing. Nationally scarce nocturnal moths include the cream-bordered green pea and chocolate-tip, while the red-eyed damselfly and red-veined and black darters are notable among the Odonata.
  Several rare flies have been recorded, including three species, Parochthiphila coronata, Calamoncosis aspistylina and Neoascia interrupta, otherwise known in the UK only from a few sites in the East Anglian fenland. An unusual plant gall found on creeping bent was caused by the nematode Subanguina graminophila.
  Scarce plants include yellow vetchling and hairy bird's-foot trefoil. Marsh orchids flower in grassy areas in the summer, and the same species, along with the bee orchid, has colonised the verges of the adjacent Manvers Way. Other scarce plants found in the area include hairlike pondweed, pond water-crowfoot and greater pond sedge.
caption: Brown hawker dragonfly
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