Yellow flag and tree guards
30th May 2023
It is a chilly morning when I arrive at Wilderness Wood ready to check-out what's in the woods and maybe do something to enhance their biodiversity. The sun has yet to make a full showing, but the air temperature and brisk wind conspire to make me pull on my England rugby shirt over my t-shirt.
Emily appears, as ever full of welcoming smiles. She is keen to know what I might be able to offer members attending Saturday's Stewsat (Stewardship Saturday working party gathering). She has a particular task she would like addressed – clearing of brambles and low birch branches along her favourite secret path. I agree and set off in the direction of Bat Park to see what other tasks need to go onto my list.
First however I check the carnage wreaked on Marquee Meadow in my absence, whilst I was cycling in northern France. A little bird told me that there was a management cock-up and a contractor strimmed this area of acid lowland grassland. The damage done was not serious, but it means the hoped-for field of blooming wild flowers may have to wait another year to put on their best show. Call it a “cock-up on the communications front”(Reggie Perrin fans will recollect that term – the 1976-82 original of course).
I move on to look at the pond near the new chalets. It hasn't been a pond in my memory, someone having punctured its liner, but it is still a wetland area full of burr reed. A couple of years ago I threw some yellow flag seeds into it and these are returning my favour with a glorious showing of large yellow iris flowers.
I make a note of a few small jobs that could be addressed by willing workers - either this Saturday or July's version – before entering the hallowed grounds of Bat Park. It isn't really a park at all but an area of woodland that was so acidic and nutrient poor that the sweet chestnut coppice there was susceptible to phytophora (a fungus) attack. Dan decided that the whole hillside should be levelled to a terrace and converted to grassland. The levelling was done in just a few days, whilst the grassland development has been a little slower (about 7 years so far). But the elements, rabbits and deer have all been conspiring to slow things down a little. It is finally mostly covered in grassland vegetation, although this is rabbit grazed to within 1cm of the rather thin soil. Who said conservation was a quick fix?
With the deer fence finally in place I feel we can take the ugly rabbit guards off the hundreds of hedge shrubs we planted there in 2019. You may well ask how a deer fence relates to rabbit guards – it doesn't really. The rabbit guards did their job, preventing rabbits chewing the young saplings for the first 4 years of their life, but we hadn't considered that the deer might have an impact – nipping off any leaves above rabbit guard height. The deer fence has been our solution to the deer problem, but after 4 years the rabbit guards are now biodegrading and look awful. So one job on the Stewsat list will be to remove the rabbit guards and bamboo canes which hold them in place.
The heathland area of Bat Park is quickly being invaded by birch saplings. 15% tree cover is considered healthy for heathland – providing singing perches for birds, but any more than this risks shading-out the heather we are trying to encourage to spread. A good job for willing hands to cut back, along with invasive brambles and bracken fronds.
Satisfied that this job fits the bill, I go in search of other projects for our wonderful volunteers to do on Saturday. I check-out Emily's secret path to see how overgrown it is. Much to my surprise it isn't. I recall cutting it back a couple of years ago, but when I arrive I discover that the brambles and low birch branches have all gone (or have not regrown). Instead the path-side birches have become 2 or 3 metres tall, casting shade which deters the growth of low branches and brambles. Now the path is lined with bluebells whose bulbs have just been awaiting their chance to spring up. Nothing stands still in nature. When you think you have it looking just the way you want it, Mother Nature waves her magic wand and everything changes. Sadly Emily's path is no longer the secret it once was - now that the scrub lining it has evaporated into thin air. That's one job we can cross off the Stewsat list then.
It is time for me to check the new ponds in the lower wood. I am delighted that the stream is still filling the old penstock ponds, but it is a mere trickle now and will probably run dry within a few weeks. Most of the blanket weed has gone, thanks I suspect to tadpole grazing. There are still hundreds, even thousands of them flitting through the water, but they show no sign of growing legs or turning into 'froglets' yet. It might be a close-run race between the pond drying up as the summer progresses and them being developed enough to hop-it to somewhere safer. I realise that one of the benefits of floating vegetation, such as water lilies, is that the floating leaves will reduce evaporation of the pond water. It would be useful to be able to buy 'instant' dehydrated water lilies which only require you to add water. But nature works at her own pace.
The pond is full of sticks thrown in by children (and possibly their parents?). I want to discourage this, so removal of them is called for. Like broken windows in an unused building, sticks in a pond attract similar actions from others passing-by. It is a tricky business since the mud is about 20 cms deep, the water 30 cms deep and my wellies are 50 cms high. Whilst my white England rugby shirt may not be-so for much longer.
As I am fishing out the sticks a mother and her young daughter arrive and I can feel their eyes on the 'dipstick' floundering about in the mire.
“You can join me if you like.” I call over my shoulder (I daren't turn for fear of coming to a sticky brown end) , but neither of them is of a mind to assist. However, the mother uses the information board next to the pond to give her daughter a lesson on pond ecology, which is most gratifying - me being its author.
12.15pm and the lunchtime bell is imminent so I vacate the pond, still reasonably white of shirt and I head back to base. I am pleased to note that lots of lesser spearwort flowers are now opening up, populating shallow ponds close to the stream. Mother nature has discovered this newly created habitat and is taking advantage of the life-giving properties of the 'wet-stuff'.
A blackcap sings from somewhere in the woodland, telling me that she too likes the wetland, which will provide lots of newly emerging flies for her offspring. A speckled wood butterfly flits by, but Jake gets the credit there – he's been widening the rides so that they can flirt and mate in the improved sunlight.
It has been a profitable morning. I have my list of jobs, I've done a few others of my own and now the sun is inviting me to take my England rugby shirt off.
No thanks - I recall the saying “Ne're cast a clout till May is out.” (never cast off a piece of clothing until May is past).
