Boardwalk, books, birds and other spring things

 As we are too well aware, the main boardwalk is deteriorating, but the good news is that its replacement has begun! Our NWT warden George has obtained funding to replace it bit by bit, and the first section has just been done. Unfortunately, few volunteers were free to help on Monday 7^th April, but Andrew and Jenny were there to lend their support. Here’s what Andrew reported:

“Jenny and I represented the Southrepps volunteers on the boardwalk work-party this morning. And what a perfect spring morning it was for a bit of gentle labouring in the beautiful English countryside.

 It took us about two hours to unload the new wood from the trailer (parked on the Bradfield Road corner verge) and move it to the work site. We also loaded up George’s trailer with the old boardwalk wood: he’s decided to take it back to Cley where he has a skip.

One of the Cley volunteers (Ian) also assisted. George, Ian and one other NWT chap will be laying part of the new boardwalk this afternoon.”

They did so well that George cancelled the next day’s work party. He had something else he needed to attend to but returned two days later to put new netting on the boardwalk.  He was very grateful for the help from Andrew and Jenny. Here are a couple of pictures to show the new section in place,

At the same time a start was also made on replacing the very dodgy bit outside the tool store. Here’s how it looked a few days ago: it’s waiting for more materials before it can be finished.

We’ve been treated to a lot of exceptional Spring weather lately; perhaps too much sun and very little desperately needed rain, but hey, “mustn’t grumble.” As a result, as revealed by the sightings board at the information point, things have really taken off since our last posting. Lessercelandines are everywhere and marshmarigold has been reported, along with the regular snake’shead fritillary, the presence of which remains mysterious. On the bird front chiffchaffs and great tits are singing everywhere, (Here’s a link to a recording I made on 19^th March), and blackcaps were first reported on 31^st March.

There were a few real highlights too: a pair of ravens has been spotted several times (perhaps they’re breeding somewhere – let’s hope so), and the best bird of all was a hawfinch, which graced the feeders in a garden very close to the Common, as shown in this fabulous picture.

Not close enough to the Common to merit a tick for the site, but your own correspondent was very excited to catch a fleeting glimpse of a female henharrier elsewhere in the Southrepps area. It was presumably passing through, no doubt on its way to an upland area to breed. We have to hope it evades the guns of those misguided people who continue to break the law by attempting to wipe out anything that might fancy a grouse for a meal. They really are fabulous birds.

It’s a general rule that the best sightings occur when the observer is out without a decent camera, as was the case with the said harrier. However, having recently missed out on photographing an unusually obliging blackcap on Jubilee Boardwalk recently, I encumbered myself with the necessary equipment a few days later. All to no avail until back on Jubilee Boardwalk I spotted a treecreeper creeping up a tree. These mouse-like birds can be hard to spot, and harder still to photograph, but I present to you this heavily cropped and therefore somewhat blurred image.

I have also seen a few swallows in the area, but not enough yet to make a summer. No house martins yet grace my year list, and even if they were here there’s precious little wet mud around for them to use to make their nests.

On that dry note, it was pleasing to see frogspawn at The Pit around 20^th March, but the water level there is already looking very low, which might not do much for the chances of many tadpoles becoming frogs.

And now for a few books related to the season:

Raising Hare, Chloe Dalton’s first foray into authorship, is beautifully written; unsentimental yet unconditionally kind and respectful of a wild animal that chose to treat her as an equal. Everything about the book, including the drawn images and its general production, is exquisite. The author was an extremely busy London-based professional who found herself confined to her country home during the first pandemic lockdown. She found a very young leveret (baby hare) on the track leading to her house one morning, and it was still there in an unusually exposed location many hours later, so she felt compelled to rescue it. She had no idea how to look after it (who does?) and everything pointed to it ending badly, but with advice and research she found a way. The hare was never caged and as soon as it felt the urge it was able to come and go, eventually producing at least three litters of its own leverets. Everything about this book is beautiful, but it does come with one difficulty: it’s difficult to put down.

Spring is the only season by the prolific Simon Barnes includes the usual stuff about plants re-growing or sprouting anew in this most beloved season, plus plenty on the relationship of spring to literature, religion, art, and mythology. He also explains why it is that we experience different seasons in our northern latitudes, while the tropics don’t. All good stuff and well worth a read. Both these books are available from Norfolk County Libraries.

On the subject of beautiful books, I was lucky enough to stumble across a treasure trove of Ladybird books in a charity shop recently, so pounced on What to Look for in Spring and Autumn and Winter.

When tthis volume was published in 1961 it cost 2/6 and at that time children were being told they should be able to see, amongst other things, lapwings doing their display flight, grey wagtails, cuckoos, turtle doves, and nightingales – my, how things have changed!

Time for growth

Now that the cutting season is over for another year you will be hearing less from us about work done on the Commons. This of course is largely because very little work is possible through spring and summer without disturbing the inhabitants of the place, who need to concentrate on growing and breeding.

Instead, so you don’t forget about us, we thought it might be a good idea to do some occasional postings about the plants and animals that can be found here as the seasons progress. Wherever possible, images will either be freshly taken, or re-used from the now defunct Southrepps Commons Trust website, which only used pictures taken on the Commons. (If you have any images of plants or animals on the Commons that you would like to be included on this blog (and of course acknowledged), please email them to scommonsvolunteers@gmail.com including the word “blog” in the subject line.)

To kick off, this little video taken on 14^th March this year at the bridge over Fox’s Beck, mid-way along the boardwalk, is a reminder of how soul-soothing a few quiet minutes spent here can be. The birds are now becoming much more vocal – particularly the robin which dominates this particular recording, although it is briefly joined by the inevitable woodpigeon.

While we’re on the subject of birdsong, the first of the warblers to start singing is the chiffchaff. Many of these little gems actually manage to stay here through the winter, and so have the advantage of being already up and running at the start of the breeding season. Others don’t go far for their winter holidays (southern Europe and north Africa), so are bound to be quicker off the mark than the long-haul sub-Saharan migrants.

This bird has the decency to have a distinctive, if very simple, song that actually tells you its name as it sings! The RSPB website is a font of valuable information about, well, birds: this is a link to their page about the chiffchaff and its easy to recognise song: https://www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/chiffchaff

This image was taken from the now almost inaccessible Scouts’ Pond near the Jubilee Boardwalk in April 2011. I think it’s the best picture of a bird I have ever managed to take.

At this time of year, while trees are yet to come into leaf but the resident birds are becoming more vocal and active, bullfinches are a particular delight to find. I always approve of species that make their identification easy (like the chiffchaff with its song), so the white bum shown by flying bullfinches is something to celebrate. They have a very quiet, gentle call, which once noticed is a tell-tale giveaway that they are in the vicinity.

If anything, the male bullfinch is perhaps a little too gaudy; it looks as though a young girl has got at her mother’s make-up box and overdone it somewhat. The female on the other hand is rather plain – apart from her aforementioned diagnostic white bum. This photo of a male bird was taken by volunteer and winch master Dave Goode in his garden adjoining the common in January 2016.

See the excellent BTO website at https://www.bto.org/understanding-birds/birdfacts/bullfinch for all the information you might want about bullfinches, and recordings of their calls and song.

Thanks to heroic volunteering efforts, almost 500 plant species have been recorded on the Commons. Plants likely to be seen in flower here during the next couple of months are:

Marsh Marigold 

Creeping Buttercup 

Lesser Celandine 

Red Campion

Lady's Smock (also known as cuckoo flower) 

Tormentil

Herb Robert

Bog Bean (was the emblem of the Southrepps Commons Trust)

Moschatel/TownHall Clock 

Marsh Valerian

Common Cotton Grass 

Carnation Sedge

Lesser Pond-Sedge

Bluebell

Common Twayblade

Click on the plant names for further information and pictures on various websites. (All links open in new windows.)

Some butterflies which have over-wintered as hibernating adults make an early appearance if the weather has a warm spell. Last week it was very pleasantly warm, and some gorgeous male brimstones were seen, as well as a few fast-moving commas, and I have seen at least one small tortoiseshell. (Brimstones are incidentally considered to be the reason we call these insects butterflies, as the males of this species is the colour of butter.)

Follow this link for more about the brimstone: https://www.norfolkwildlifetrust.org.uk/wildlife-explorer/invertebrates/butterflies/brimstone

Comma

And finally for now, two gardens close to The Common have camera traps mounted in them by their nature-loving owners. Both have Fox’s Beck running through them, and those camera traps often pick up visits from creatures that must also appear on the part of the Beck running across the Common. This wonderful footage from 6^th March this year shows a fabulous little egret in glorious sunshine, using its distinctive yellow feet to shuffle up the stream bed in order to flush out some prey.

 

Reedbed put to bed

 In a show of welcome solidarity, the local birds have declared Spring sprung. A recent walk in the glorious sunshine round the Common earlier in the week was all the more enjoyable due to the live playlist of robin, song thrush, wren, chaffinch, dunnock, goldcrest, great tit, greenfinch, and wonderfully – siskin. That siskin was one of a flock feeding on the alder trees at the bridge over Fox’s Beck, and unusually, they stayed close at hand (they’re usually way up at the tops of the trees). As usual however, I did not have my camera with me, and relatively close though they were, the phone wasn’t going to be up to the job. Fellow volunteer Janet however had been properly equipped when she was there a few days earlier, and she got this shot of an unusually confiding female.

This also being a time for disputing territory, a large garden adjacent to the Common was recently the scene of an unprovoked attack on a barn owl by a buzzard. The owl swiftly left the scene, with the assailant in hot pursuit. Kestrels will often steal prey from barn owls, but this is going a bit far. Apparently, this beastly behaviour is fairly common, and there are videos of it on YouTube to prove it.

The midweek downpour had its inevitable effect on the giant sponge that is Southrepps Common. Including your own correspondent, several people discovered the hidden deep pitfalls, with wellies filled with water thick with liquid mud the unlovely result. Last night’s below freezing temperature meant that we 14 volunteers were again greeted this morning by the makings of cold hands and feet. However, the sun was out and warm, so the suffering was so much reduced that we all felt we "mustn’t grumble".

It really was a lovely morning, which Maggie for one said she could not resist. On arrival at the car park I was struck by the scene, made even better by a singing song thrush, ably accompanied by a robin. In the background you can also hear Grillo hard at work.

It’s not all just turn up and bash away; oh no. Here we see two team leaders assessing the jobs to be done, photographed by another.

Those jobs broke down into the usual clearing away of the cut reeds, and cutting back the scrub which had been encroaching from the edge of the site.

Before the reed can be removed, it must first be cut. Here’s the man responsible: as can be seen, he is showing full respect to the machine, in case it turns on him.

Once cut, the reeds are loaded onto the sheets. This time we were dealing with beautifully light stuff; here’s Ken looking like a proper Norfolk reed cutter.

Then of course the sheet must be moved to the dump site; in this case across treacherously boggy ground.

We must never forget the winch team: they always know which way to look.

And anyone who can look this good clearly knows which way to look. Don’t you admire the backlighting?

This gentleman kept us enthralled by his tales of working as a daffodil picker some time around 1992. He revealed that he was paid £4 for every thousand he picked, and the most he picked in a day was 28,000! He then moved on to what he was paid for harvesting tulip bulbs, but eventually we decided we ought to do some more work of our own.

There was no singing of note this time, but talk of threading the winch rope through a gap between two dumped piles led to it being called the Cumberland Gap, and the erudite amongst us knew that was the title of an American folk song. The words of it were however sadly (or luckily) unavailable.

Early on, wincher Dave had rashly mentioned that it didn’t look like we had much to move. In a moment of self-deprecation, he called himself “tw*t”. Here’s what he saw.

From that dump site the view was exquisitely framed by a tree, or so I was told, so I snapped it (not the tree, the picture of course). Note the morass just where we were working!

In amongst the scrub was a tree decorated with a wretched balloon that had been let loose goodness knows where; why is that encouraged, let alone allowed?

It became useful though, as a coat rack as the sun warmed us up.

The refreshment break came with its usual welcome. It was made all the more pleasurable by the addition of Nina’s splendid apple cake.

After that it was back to sloshing about in the mud and hacking away at the scrub. Here’s a man possessed, or very focussed on the job in hand!

At last, the reed had all been moved, and it was time to clear up. Dragging even an empty sheet across the mud is an arduous task, but one the folding crew were equal to.

And here’s how we left Area D, for wildlife to enjoy for the next four years.

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

Hello all.

I apologise for the slightly tardy thank you. I, like all of you, had to have a period of rest and recuperation! What a cutting season we have had, and an amazing final flourish today. When you can, take a walk and look at the enormous space you have all cleared and the huge piles that testify to the work involved. We sincerely thank you all. We are very grateful that we will not be visiting that area again until 2029! Thanks to Nina for the reviving warm apple cake, delicious.

In two weeks’ time we will be holding another working party, at this moment we are not sure what it will be. As Julie has said George has asked if we would be happy to dismantle part of the boardwalk for him. Many of you have expressed an interest so it might be that if that fits with his timetable or possibly School Common. We will be in touch. Enjoy this beautiful afternoon.

Thank you.

Margaret for the team leaders

And in other news, 

we have again been honoured by a visit from an otter in Fox’s Beck, Here’s some cracking video footage taken by a camera trap showing it in glorious detail.

 

 

 

The splashy fen, again

What with yesterday’s evening snow and the constantly nagging easterly wind, the weather hasn’t been great of late, but there are some intimations that life is not actually extinct. One such indication is the emergence of Winter aconites on the verges near the Common. Way back in 1785 the great pioneering naturalist Revd. Gilbert White noted their emergence in his journal entry on 16^th February. The following year, on Valentine’s Day, he noted “Bullfinches eat the buds of honeysuckles”. It was decidedly chilly in 1792: on the 19^th “Frost comes within doors” but on the 16^th in 1774 in Selborne skylarks were beginning to sing; in Southrepps right now they already are too – I heard my first this year on 23^rd January.

In Scoop, Evelyn Waugh’s rather wet Lush Places correspondent for The Beast newspaper is famous for writing “Feather-footed through the splashy fen passes the questing vole…” Anyone wondering what a splashy fen is like need look no further than Area D on Southrepps Common. Its’s splashy alright, and rich in cloying, indeed sucking mud. Here’s a taste:

This is the spot visited again by 15 questing volunteers who made their unsteady rather than feather-footed way to the scene of the action. With the responsible adults anxious to avoid near-drownings, the worst of the deep holes in that splashy fen were marked by little sticks and gaudy tape: they did the trick – nobody fell in.

On arrival, fashionably early again, my first view was of Team Leader Margaret booting one of two found footballs my way.

We quickly determined that the pitch was unplayable, and the balls were left beside the boardwalk. They were reduced in number to the tune of one during the first half of our labours. Speculation about who might have half-inched one was rife, with my suggestion being a Norwich City footballer, in clear need of the practice. The actual culprit was probably a passing dog, seen with a football in its mouth – and that counts a as evidence m’lud. A third ball was found later on; this one so encased in moss as to appear at first glance to be an exciting new spheroid species.

We were only just setting up and layers were coming off! Milder than we thought!

The early arrivals at work….

This is the amount of scrub to be cleared over the next few weeks!

Somewhere in here is the tree we want to attach the winch to next time!

The winch crew were on top form, utilising a ‘turning block’ to create the necessary space for the sheets to be turned over using the winch, rather than the exhausting way of doing it manually.

Meanwhile the pitchforkers were kept busy dealing with the reeds as fast as Grillo could mow them.

Incidentally, on a topical geopolitical note, it did occur to your usual correspondent that should the worst predictions come true and this nation should have to stand alone to repel the advances of the Russian Bear, we at least in Southrepps are ready, armed as we are with sharp pointy pitchforks.

While the usual reed shifting was taking place, invasive scrub repelling was also happening, in very muddy conditions (as shown in the video above). Team Leader Julie says she got a tiny feel of the mud in the trenches - especially after the footie game earlier!  It was difficult to walk in and not ideal when she knocked her glasses off into it. (Without having them on at that point, she found it difficult to retrieve them!)

It was at this spot that Team Leader Margaret got stuck: sadly un-photographed, she ended up with her legs trapped in the mud spectacularly wide apart. As the perhaps less than sympathetic Brian declared, “That’s why we call her Marge – she spreads so well!”

Shortly before the half-time break the way through to the rest of the Common was opened up by doughty John, today’s Grillo driver. It felt much like the elation the Channel Tunnel tunnellers must have had when they broke through.

Form an elderly queue for tea they said, but no one listened.

During the break we were treated to Custard Creams whilst being regaled with hilarious tales from Noel’s eventful life. More are promised next time. The man himself was, as usual, singing at the dumping site, but surprisingly, only sotto voce. When we were joined by Sheila (with choir experience) and Team Leader Margaret (less so), the quality improved (according to the said Team Leader anyway). Next time, the attempt will be made to record a performance for the delectation of the entire internet.

As the mud was almost at the top of the scrub bashers' wellies by the dead hedge they got everyone to bring a fork of dry reed over to put on top so they could stand without sinking or falling over! Teamwork!  They also laid a mat by the winch area for next time.

And here is the dead hedge; rather more dishevelled than usual, but given the conditions, it’s still great.

At the dumping site this rather snazzy bracket fungus was spotted.

At the end of the session, the party being over, we had to trudge our soggy way back…

… leaving a job well done again …. Look at that blue sky!!

Here’s how we left the site, with hopefully just one more session required to complete the job. 

Here is the Team Leaders’ message of thanks:

Here we all are again. Or at least 15 hearty souls who ventured into the increasingly boggy reed bed. It gets more difficult each session to find words that adequately thank you for all your hard work. The liquid mud today seemed to up the ante this morning, but as always a tremendous amount was achieved and we are hopeful that the 2nd of March will see us finish the cutting and clearing of the reed bed. A task that looked impossible at the beginning of December, so very well done.

Hope to see you all in two weeks, even perhaps Kevin if the finger is pronounced healed. For those of you under par this morning, thanks for making that extra effort and look after yourselves.

 Thank you again, we really don't take your help for granted, and are delighted to see you.

Margaret on behalf of the team leaders.