Open spaces become city’s first two nature reserves

The lake was dug out over four years in the 1990s and now hosts more than 70 species of invertebrates – including a rare diving beetle, known as the wasp for its black and yellow underside. Great crested newts have been found in most of the ponds, barn owls use the site, and there is a residential family of foxes, as well as roe deer and grass snakes.

“Twitchers” can enjoy watching birds including peregrine falcon, kingfisher and lapwing.

The site, together with Rockford Fields in east Hull, have been designated nature reserves, opening the door to extra funding and protecting against development, as a result of a partnership between Hull Council, Hull Biodiversity Partnership and the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust.

Rockford Fields is a five hectare meadow which is home to a vast array of wild flowers and insects in the summer months. The site is all that is left in inner Hull of the once expansive Sutton Ings, used as pasture by the Monks of Meaux over eight centuries ago. A legacy of its ancient past is alium vineale, or crow garlic, a very pungent type of garlic which is rarely found in the north of England.