A tale with a twist

It might only be temporary, but the media are at last showing real interest in the conjoined climate and biodiversity crises, such that coverage is everywhere. Encouraged no doubt by the impending COP26 conference, and Prince William’s Earthshot prize awards, no-one in Britain can now be unaware of these issues. I only hope the focus stays on them once the media circus moves on. For my part, I take some comfort from knowing that my volunteering on our commons is making a small contribution. We know that peaty wet places have an even greater effect on removing carbon from the atmosphere than trees, so our efforts to keep our little patch in good order have real value. Having completed our scheduled work on the central fen area, we’re still currently working on the species-rich wet grassy areas alongside Warren Road. A major part of the task is to keep at bay the encroaching willow and alder trees – which if left unchecked would overwhelm the areas, and in drying them out actually release the carbon they’ve been busy storing. We’ve been splashing about in a lot of water there lately, and it occurs to me that the Common also acts as a great big sponge, probably preventing flooding in the area. Alongside all that of course, maintaining them helps to protect the many special plants growing there, and the myriad small (and largely un-surveyed) creatures depending on them, so in turning out at the weekend to do my bit, I’m ticking several boxes at once; that’s presumably what economists like to call productivity.

One of the many causes of biodiversity loss is out-competition by invasive non-native species, which with human help have managed to escape from the predators that had evolved alongside them in their far-away native homes. Over many years we have been pretty successful at controlling the spread of Himalayan Balsam, which can so devastate wet areas. There are many places nearby where this pernicious pest is not controlled, and the way it dominates those places serves as a warning to us to keep up our efforts. Very sadly, we have been powerless to control the spread of New Zealand Pigmyweed Crassula helmsii which first afflicted us on Scouts’ Pond (off the Jubilee Boardwalk), but has now spread to The Pit. Himalayan Balsam will have entered the wild having escaped from gardens; it’s all too easy for it, with its method of ‘exploding’ seeds into flowing water, enabling it to spread quickly along the watercourses it goes on to infest. Crassula was sold as a garden pond plant, and it’s easy to see how that got out. This wretched plant is easily transported from place to place on the fur or feathers of wildlife or pets, or the boots of people. Effective options for its removal are limited and expensive, so this is a problem that NWT may struggle to resolve. In the meantime, it is incumbent on us all to ensure our own pets don’t add to the problem, by keeping them out of the ponds.

Now that the opportunity has arisen to cut back the vegetation around the Pit, the extent of the infestation is horribly clear for all to see. Team Leader Julie reports: “Kevin ran a small work party on the Sunday following our last main work party, clearing the overgrown brambles, reed and shrubs to restore the three viewpoints into the pit. We also cut back the tree and shrub growth encroaching onto Pit Common. The reed in the Pit was also strimmed to reduce the growth in the water.

The Crassula is a real problem in the Pit and we couldn’t impact on that today but you can now see that there is water in the area. We all had to wash our equipment and boots when we came out of the water to prevent cross contamination from the Crassula.”

 here are some photos….

 Before we started.

During the session...

And after the session. 

Boot cleaning at the end…. Kevin clearly knows his place!!

Bailey managed to get a picture of a vole we saw by the Pit.

Here is Team Leader Kevin’s message of thanks:

Thank you very much to the restricted group of volunteers who came to Pit Common this morning. We have achieved an awful lot: cutting and removing weeds, brambles and nettles. Some of the trees were given a gentle trim as well. Opening up the viewpoints from the benches works really well.

We welcomed our new student volunteer. Thank you to Bailey for all his hard work. We look forward to seeing him at future work parties.

Regards, Kevin

 After a considerable drop of rain, the Pit now looks like this:

As with the fens further down the road, the Pit must be providing a free service to the village in holding at least some of the water rushing down Pit Street in times of flood.

 We have demonstrated before why we volunteers put so much effort into looking after our commons. Here is a picture of Area B taken in September 2012…

… and the same view in July 2021

 

And so to Sunday’s main event – completing the clearing of previously cut vegetation from Area A. A fortnight ago, the vote was put to the assembled company on whether now the equinox had passed we should revert to starting our sessions at 10.00 am. The cheers following that momentous act of democracy must have echoed round the village for some time, so two weeks on 22 bright-eyed and well-rested volunteers convened on the area bordering Warren Road. We were blessed with ideal weather for the job this time: not too hot, not too cold, with a bit of sunshine to keep us cheerful, and absolutely no precipitation, not of any kind. The windrows (or ricketts) were unsurprisingly undisturbed, so the task at hand was to transfer them to the four drag sheets as efficiently as possible, wet and heavy as they were.

A couple of windrows were close enough to the edge of the Alder carr for a group of highly motivated pitchfork wielders to transfer the stuff direct.

One of the challenges is the tipping over of the loaded sheet at the dumping point. Before we had the winch to help us, this was by far the most tiring part of the whole process, but even now a bit of manual intervention is sometimes called for.

The result is of course a growing heap, which initially at first assumes huge proportions…

.. but it does rot down and disappear remarkably quickly.

After an hour’s hard labour, the refreshment break was as welcome as ever.

We were struck by the layout of the abandoned pitchforks, most bearing their users’ gloves.

With so many people there we got the work done extremely well, and would probably have finished well within the scheduled two hours, if it had not been for The Twist. Unlike its worn-out predecessor, our new rope is determined to constantly twist itself whilst in use. Now a twisted rope makes winching impossible, as the convoluted loops it puts itself in will jam the drum on the winch – and that might mean we need another rope, or worse still, another winch. So the winch team found they had to painstakingly un-twist the wretched thing between each pull, greatly slowing down the normally very smooth operation, and causing them to work overtime (at double the usual rate of course!)

Here is how the area looked at that point:

The boardwalk edge between the car park and our storage container was also trimmed back.

Also previously cut stuff from along the boardwalk…

...was moved to a dump site further into the woody area...

...leaving the site looking much nicer.

Here is Team Leader Julie’s Message of thanks:

Dear volunteers

A huge thank you goes out to the team of volunteers who turned out this morning to finish the clearance of the cut reed on Area A. Due to the need to cut it before the end of September (to satisfy Natural England) this reed had been sat for several weeks and had become quite heavy to move. Most of it was moved onto the sheets for winching to the dump sites, but mention must be made to the small group who manually moved the reed near the bottom of the area onto a separate heap.

The winching operation was hampered today by issues with our new rope getting twisted. So special thanks also to those who ended up staying almost an extra hour to complete the dumping and painstakingly untwist the length of the rope at the end of the session.

Away from the main group we had people clearing cut scrub from the boardwalk edges to a dump site further back into the scrub and a lonely pair over the other side of the boardwalk clearing the boardwalk edges along to the car park. The entire boardwalk on the SSSI common is now passable with ease, so thank you to those who have worked at this over the weeks.   

There were a lot of people using the boardwalk this morning and enjoying the common, which was lovely to see.

We cannot begin cutting the areas of 'reed bed' until December so our outing in two weeks time will most likely be at School Common, but we will confirm this a few days before the work party.

Thanks for all your hard work and support - it is very much appreciated.

Regards, Julie (for the Team Leaders)

Wet windrows and leaping Alpacas

 

Beguiled perhaps by what turned out to be an extravagantly optimistic weather forecast, 24 plucky volunteers turned up for another punishing encounter with the windrows of cut grass waiting to be shifted to the edge of Area A. Including yet another very welcome first-timer, this magnificent turnout is the biggest yet this year, and between us we put in a stunning 50 hours of work on Norfolk Wildlife Trust’s behalf!

As indicated, the weather was expected to be dry if uninspiring, leading many of our number to be ill-prepared for the precipitation, which kept changing from drizzle to quite heavy rain and back again.

With the temperature unseasonably warm, but wet-weather gear involved, the comfort factor was low, but through gritted teeth we still seemed to enjoy (is that how you spell endure?) the experience. The rain even almost stopped at the half-time break.

Natural England’s deadline for the cutting of this section was the end of September, so in order to meet that Grizzly driver Old Hand John and New Hand Dave finished the job on the last day possible, with Team Leader Margaret gamely creating the windrows (or rickles).

The idea of windrows is that they are left for a while to dry, which is fine, so long as the weather is fine. The intervening days had not been exclusively balmy however; indeed they had often been very wet. The inevitable consequence was of course that the material was soaked and heavy, but the pitchforking crew went at it with a will.

With so many people to help, all four drag sheets were in constant use, and there was scope for brush cutting and scrub trimming too, as well as grass mowing at The Pit. As regular readers of this blog will be all too aware, the main work consists of transferring the cut stuff onto a drag sheet

The sheet is then winched to the day’s dumping site…

…and then the winch is used to turn the sheet over (with a little manual help), resulting in a large heap for decomposition over the next few months.

This is quite a large area to clear, with limited options for dumping sites, so the heap is inevitably a big one, until it rots down. The doughty winch crew can still just be seen behind it:

A cynical reader (of which there are surely none of this blog) might wonder if there has been a trick with perspective here, and the people are a considerable distance back from the heap, or perhaps they are kneeling, or standing in a hole, but put that cynicism aside dear reader; this is a true and accurate reflection of the situation. Fortunately, we had the foresight to leave enough space for their escape at the close of play.

Once the work is done and the weary volunteers have trudged off home, the tools must still be returned to the storage container. Our famous little green cart is used for this purpose, but this time it was caught up in a small Camelid-related drama, as related by Team Leader Julie:

“Unfortunately I didn’t feel I could get my phone out when we met the Alpacas just past the Beck. We had a fully laden trolley which we couldn’t lift off the boardwalk or reverse back over the Beck … that would have been a disaster!

So they tried taking the Alpacas off the boardwalk but they were not keen - very sensible animals knew it wasn’t good ground!!

We eventually had to pull the trolley over to the very edge of the boardwalk and they managed to squeeze the Alpacas past! Only one fell off and he/she seemed none the worse for wear thank goodness.”

Loyal reader Brenda tells me that she was particularly taken with Julie’s lovely photos of Grass of Parnassus flowers in the previous couple of postings: this is a useful reminder that these beautiful and rare flowers are still present, so if you haven’t visited the Common recently, now is a good time to do so. Plenty of these and other plants can be readily seen from the boardwalk.

 Here is Team Leader Julie’s message of thanks:

Hello all

Thank you to the wonderful group of volunteers who turned out this morning and braved the rain. It wasn't the best weather for the job in hand. I lost count of the times I got wet and then dried out again throughout the session!

However, despite the weather we achieved a great deal. The largest group cleared cut reed from the top of Area A and created more 'rickles' (loosely piled heaps) of reed lower down Area A to aid clearance in the next session in two weeks’ time.

However, we also had smaller teams cutting back overgrown shrubs at the edge of the boardwalk near to the bridge over the Beck and brushcutting and sweeping the boardwalk from Bradfield Road around to the Central Area. Last, but definitely not least, one of our regular Pit Mowing volunteers mowed the grass around the Pit. 

An extraordinary effort from everyone today and we cannot tell you how grateful we are for your efforts. What a team!

We usually change our start time to 10am once the clocks change - and we had a quick vote at 'coffee time' and it was a resounding "Yes" to the later start time from the next session!

Regards, Julie (for the Team Leaders)