No work parties but here are some statistics to be going on with

 It’s no surprise that now we are back in Covid-induced lockdown, working parties on the Common have been suspended. Accordingly, Norfolk Wildlife Trust has declared "Following the Government announcement earlier this week we are suspending all group and indoor volunteering, in line with Government restrictions. There won’t be any work parties on our reserves, and our visitor centres will remain closed while the current lockdown remains in place. We will review the situation once further Government advice becomes available, which is expected to be in late February/early March".

As Team Leader Julie said in her email to volunteers recently, “The Southrepps Team Leaders had already discussed the latest restrictions and guidance and agreed that we could not restart work on the Common until far more of our Volunteers are vaccinated anyway - so we are in full agreement with NWT.”

Be all that as it may, the start of a new year is often the time for reflection on the year just completed, and in the absence of any work to report about our Commons, a few statistics might be of interest. We are assaulted daily by the statistics of pandemic gloom, so who knows, some rather more hopeful figures might even be welcome.

We volunteers jointly clocked up on behalf of NWT an impressive 659.5 hours. Despite all the Covid restrictions, this is slightly more than we did for NWT in 2019, even though we were only able to have 10 working parties, compared to 14 in the previous unfettered year. After the first lockdown we had smaller groups than usual in line with NWT guidelines, but ran sessions every week instead of fortnightly. When restrictions relaxed a little we had slightly bigger groups. But we still had more volunteers than spaces in groups so we split them into several separate groups across the site. This allowed all volunteers expressing a desire to do so a chance to work within the guidelines, without exceeding the recommended levels per work group.

The working parties accounted for just under 430 hours, with the remainder being spent on tasks such as removing invasive Himalayan Balsam and Alders, repairing the boardwalk, maintaining Pit Common, and taking regular photographs from fixed points to monitor the sites through the year. When SCT was responsible for the Commons we didn’t include time spent on admin, but for the complete picture we are now reporting that to NWT as well.

We also help NWT monitor the biodiversity of the Commons – mainly through the provision of a whiteboard at the Information Point, for visitors to report what they have seen. Some of the species noted there are rather imaginative, and in the case of the Dodo that someone claimed to have seen amongst the reeds, long since extinct and never found in Britain anyway, but the vast majority of reports are genuine. We have passed on to NWT 480 records, of which a wonderful 297 came via the whiteboard, with the remainder from the BTO Birdtrack database.

Inevitably, the bulk of records (397) were of birds, with 75 separate species reported. We know we have at least 396 plant species here, and indeed 20 of those volunteer hours were spent on a plant survey, but only 14 plant records made it on to the whiteboard, so it is clearly very important that the survey work continues.

Also noted on the whiteboard we had 13 butterfly species, eight mammals, two dragonflies (Broad-bodied Chaser and Ruddy Darter), two amphibians (frog and newt), and one each of reptiles (Common lizard), Fungi (Witch’s butter), Beetles (Glow worms), Molluscs (White-lipped snail), Pond skater, and wasp (Hornet). There are obviously surprising omissions – presumably because some creatures (like wasps) are too common for people to think worth recording. (In fact, we were only too aware that common wasps live on the site, as several took exception to being disturbed by our maintenance work, and as reported in a previous blog posting took it out in a most unfair fashion on our innocent volunteers!)

So, the plea is, please add what you see to the whiteboard. Otherwise, in time to come it might erroneously appear that our Commons were bereft of wasps, beetles and plants.

See https://www.norfolkwildlifetrust.org.uk/wildlife-in-norfolk/commons/southrepps-common for links to lists of species known to have been found here. The birds list should be updated shortly.

 I mentioned our regular series of Fixed Point Photographs, and in case you’re unable to visit at the moment, here are a few shots from the latest set, taken before the latest strictures were announced:

Boardwalk entrance on Lower Street

 

Central Area G

 

Area B (From Warren Road)

 

The Pit