Cold but beautiful

The last blog posting mentioned the marvellous number of sightings of many different species that have been added to the whiteboard at the information point at the Lower Street end of the main boardwalk. This is an example of the valuable contribution we ordinary people are making to scientific data gathering; what has become called Citizen Science. One of the biggest Citizen Science projects is of course the RSPB’s Big Garden Birdwatch, and this year’s one takes place next weekend. Anyone can take part; you don’t need a big garden as that’s not what ‘Big Garden’ refers to. You don’t even need a garden; a window box or a park will do just as well. As usual, I will be doing it for the required hour some time during 27^th to 29^th January. Full details are at The RSPB Wildlife Charity: Nature Reserves & Wildlife Conservation

It might have been bloomin’ cold this morning, but it was also very beautiful, and 16 frost-hardy volunteers turned out to make the most of it. Here are two trudging through the frozen reeds to join the other early starters.

The frost was making everything atmospheric.

 

On the subject of benches, sharp-eyed regular visitors to the Common will have noticed that the one on the Warren Road side of the Beck has had to be removed, as it had rotted and become unsafe.

Problems started early on when we struggled to get the sheets out of the container, as they were frozen together! The winch rope was also frozen and took a lot of unravelling! But how beautiful did the common look.

This was at the start, trying to open the frozen sheets 

Team Leaders represent the pinnacle of technical ability - they’ve progressed to wielding rakes.

Line dancing on the Common looks a bit different 

Coffee break was delivered to the working area and served from the floor - that’s dedication!

Regular readers of this blog will be painfully aware of our tendency to invent terminology. Today it was again centred on the dumping process. With a lot of trees to fit dumped vegetation between, we need to use every possible bit of a painstakingly cleared area, and this involves a lot more manual tipping off the sheets than otherwise. Noel (or was it Brian?) directed us to the “pocket” we needed to drop the drag sheet into – much like snooker, or in view of the level of difficulty, billiards. Here is a sheet being potted. 

This was tiring work: the reed stems, which had been cut a few days before, were frozen to the ground, and to each other, meaning that considerable effort was required to shift them. No wonder Bob fancied a little lie down!

Team work makes the dream work.

Here’s the expansive view from the boardwalk at the end of the session. One more session in a fortnight’s time should see the job done.

Here's Team Leader Margaret’s message of thanks:

Just a quick thank you for turning out this morning. It was a very cold start. I have been doing this for 20 years and never have the sheets and rope been frozen solid. So you all coped admirably with the extreme conditions.

I hope you all found it enjoyable and are pleased with the results. We certainly are. Hopefully one last go in two weeks will see the end of the reed bed for this year and we look forward to seeing you all then.

best wishes

Margaret and the team leaders.

And finally, anyone going down Pit Street will have noticed that the Pit is back to looking nice now, with a lot more water in it than for the last few months. 

 

Mud, mud, glorious mud!

The year has got off to a very melancholy start for the volunteers who know Les and Margaret McCormick, who have worked alongside us on the Common for many years. Sadly, Les died on 2nd January, having continued to live his life to the full throughout his long illness. They continued to volunteer whenever his health allowed - the last time being exactly a year ago, on the first working party of 2022. As always, Les was cheerful and threw himself into the work. We will miss him greatly, and send our condolences to Margaret and the family.

 

Some statistics from 2022:

The sightings whiteboard was well used again during 2022: 297 records were passed on to NWT (excluding the un-verified dinosaur, bear and reindeer ones), with 127 different species reported. (Amazingly, 297 is also the number of records sent to NWT in 2020.)

During 2022 35 of us contributed a collective 683 hours of volunteering effort on behalf of Norfolk Wildlife Trust! As well as many other small bits of work, there were 16 full working parties, with a splendid average attendance of 15.6. Most of the work is inevitably focused on the main common as it is a SSSI, and that accounted for 496 of those hours. Pit and School Commons, repairs to the boardwalk and machinery, and removing Himalayan Balsam were other major areas of our activity, but not forgetting the 30 hours clocked up on vital botanical surveys. Well done us!

 

There might be nothing like glorious mud for cooling the blood, but it does a pretty good job of freezing the feet too, and there was plenty of squidgy wet mud to do that today on the main reedbed, to which we had returned after a festive break of four weeks.

We were lucky however with the weather; following Saturday evening’s storm, the morning was bright, with only light airs, and with the inevitable physical exercise, we soon warmed up. We were lucky too, in that only a couple of hours after we packed up, what I am reliably informed Norfolk seafarers call a tempest blew up, with thunder, lightning (very very frightening) and hail.

As usual, a couple of days earlier there had been a session to provide today’s eager volunteers with plenty of cut material to work with at the start of the main session.

Although the six pre-cutters had already used it, today was the first time most of us had seen the temporary replacement for the ailing Grizzly mower. Called from the substitutes’ bench was Grillo, of Italian extraction. It was quickly named The Italian Job: Michael Caine impersonators saying “Don’t blow the bloody wheels off!” became irritating. Here is mower wrangler Kevin with Grillo.

These few images give an impression of the generally pleasant conditions (if you ignore the mud)

At the break we were cheered to see that Grillo’s manual had been discovered; better late than not at all. A diagram indicated where to insert oil – we assumed olive oil given its place of manufacture. Here we see John perusing the document. 

We had returned to the main reedbed braced for the wet conditions, following several hefty downpours. Our most recent recruit Jenny wore her mud with pride; she thought she’d never been muddier. It was good that Team Leader Margaret at last found out why she doesn’t answer to the name of Claire. This gives an idea of the soggy state of the ground.

Here’s the winch team examining recently delivered reeds in great detail. There should be four of them, but …

Winching the heavily loaded drag sheets between gaps in the trees at the edge of the area required all our impressive steering skills. Rather than weaving around rotting tree stumps, Leo (who brings our average age into tolerable levels) was tasked with extracting them. That got him muddy, and tired. Here he is applying himself to the task, and triumphantly displaying one of his victims.

Winching the sheets between two trees was like threading them through the eye of a needle. It was declared a pinch point, which until then was what I thought burglars called a house they planned to rob. Once through the needle’s eye, as ever the reeds needed tipping off the sheet and out of bed. Sometimes the classic method of using the winch to achieve it was possible, but in such a constrained spot it was sometimes necessary to tip it out manually. We call this the “Dung Beetle Roll”, although some people quite unreasonably objected to being compared to those useful insects. This then set some hares running about the music of Jelly Roll Morton and the Chilli Peppers: you see how easily we can get distracted!

Half-way through the session, the half-time break arrived, complete with warm beverages and chocolate biscuits. The pitchforks are not invited; they just stand around wearing gloves for hats, waiting patiently for the revellers’ return

Here’s how the area looked at the end of the session; one, or at most two more will see the job done, and the great view along the boardwalk and beyond opened up – for a few months anyway.

Here’s Team Leader Margaret’s message of thanks:

A very happy New year to you all.

Thank you to the 17 folk who turned up this morning to continue work on the reed bed. With luck we may be able to finish the whole thing in two weeks’ time. Special mention to the chaps who spent a couple of hours this week getting to grips with our on-loan machine whilst Grizzly is being repaired.

I also have the sad task of letting you all know that Les, a long-time volunteer died on the 2nd of January. His humour, gentleness and kindness not to mention his hard work will be much missed. We send all our love and best wishes to you Maggie.

Take care all of you and see you on the 22nd

Margaret and the team leaders.