A walk on the wild side

 

The title of this blog posting is inspired by the song by the very appropriately named Lou Reed. It was suggested by our redoubtable Grillo driver, and yes, Noel was persuaded to sing the opening lines of that song. This was after we had covered Meatloaf’s “I would do anything for love – but I won’t do that.” We learned that a good quiz question is ‘what wouldn’t he do?’ It’s a good question. This led us to compare and contrast Meatloaf with Noel – in this case Noel Coward of “Terribly flat, Norfolk” fame. It turned out there were more contrasts than comparisons.

All this jollity went on while 18 of us laboured away on a cold but lovely winter’s morning yesterday, deep in the heart of the main reedbed. Your correspondent’s tiny hand was frozen for much of the time, brought on by too much handling of cold wet ropes and suchlike. My tiny toes were also chilled, but I don’t like to go on about it. On the way to the scene of the action a detour onto the ‘Bradfield Road spur’ of the boardwalk was essential, in order to view the frosted snowdrops.

This is why we love this place - so beautiful walking onto the common that morning…but the frost was daunting.

Winch operator Dave came up with a new method for transporting the heavy gear across the previously cut part of the frozen reed bed

Grillo driver John was gamely mowing the reeds, having already enjoyed that activity a couple of days previously, so we had something to shift from the word Go.

The pitchforking team were soon risking frostbite too.

And the winching crew were removing the fruits of those labours to the dumping site at the far extreme of this area (known as Area D).

Meanwhile, a separate contingent was hard at work cutting back the scrub that had taken advantage of the previous eight years to encroach into the reedbed, and to create dumping sites for the next session.

Care has been taken to leave plenty of scrub for wildlife, as it is a very valuable habitat in its own right.

We have in our group a superman, going by the name of Andrew: his energy equals six of mine! We were intrigued to see the mist that was following him about, until we realised it was steam coming from him in the cold air.

Deep holes full of murky water are a constant hazard in this section, as several people can confirm. That’s why wellies and preferably over-trousers are so necessary.

The half-time break provided welcome rest, and refreshment in the shape of delicious apple buns, courtesy of Nina – many thanks for those! It also provided the opportunity for the chill it creep back into my tiny toes, but I don’t like to go on about my suffering. Ken warded off frostbite by doing a little jig, all on his own.

Wet and cold gloves were draped over the tops of waiting pitchforks, in the hope of warming them up: they didn’t.

After a lot more forking and dragging and tipping out of the sheets it was time to start the final clear-up.

Including rolling the sheets - bottoms up!

Then all (all?) that was needed was the trudge back through the morass with all that heavy equipment, before deciding who was going to wheel what back along the boardwalk to the storage container.

Here’s how we left the site.

What a result - brilliant!

And here are the snowdrops, newly defrosted.

Here is Team Leader Margaret’s message of thanks:

Hello All.

When I went out first thing this morning with the dog, I thought all right-minded people would be curling up with a cup of coffee and the Sunday papers. How wrong I was. 18 wonderful people came on this beautiful crisp winter's morning. We battled frozen reed and slippery mud but made amazing progress. I can't thank you enough and I was pleased to be out there with you all. Much better than the Sunday papers with their doom and gloom. Your reward is to come and do it all again in two weeks’ time. A special mention to Nina for the lovely cakes at coffee time.

Thank you, every time you exceed our expectations. I hope you all get a great sense of satisfaction of a job well done.

Margaret for the team leaders.

Last time I shared some statistics of the amount of work we did in 2024. This time it’s all about the sightings reported:

During 2024 we sent 527 sightings to NWT, of which 339 were the relevant ones put on the whiteboard at the Lower Street end of the boardwalk (dinosaurs and family pets excluded). The remainder were sightings sent to your correspondent without them being added to the board, and records sent to the BTO’s wonderful Birdtrack database by the said correspondent (see https://www.bto.org/our-science/projects/birdtrack) . Here’s how the 158 species break down into their broad groupings:

Birds	72
Mammals	9
Flowering plants	47
Ferns	1
Fungi	2
Amphibians	2
Bees	2
Butterflies	12
Reptiles	3
Beetles	2
Flies	0
Dragonflies	3
Moths	2
Spiders	1

 

We reported 177 species in 2023; the difference appears to be mainly in the number of flowering plant species reported (68 in 2023; 47 in 2024). No doubt they’re all still there, so it’s a case of urging visitors to the Common to note on the whiteboard what they see. It’s tempting to think that if it’s a common species it doesn’t need reporting, but the irony is that when these data are looked at in the future it will appear that they weren’t here at all!