If the nettles don’t get you, the thistles will

We convened at 09.00; a remarkably early start in the hopes of avoiding the worst of the threatened heat. This being so close to the dawn, I was disappointed not to be greeted by druids having another crack at solstice greeting. The 11 familiar volunteers were however a delight to reconnect with, of course, although such an unearthly hour does not suit my metabolism well. Once the sleep was rubbed from my eyes, I was as ready as the rest of them to plunge into the undergrowth of Area A (on the Warren Road side of Fox’s Beck), in search of the beastly Balsam.

Still being in the midst of a heatwave, with yesterday being the year’s hottest so far (why do the weather people on the telly report on extreme records with such glee?), we were bound to suffer, dressed as we were for protection against the rampant vegetation – not to mention the sun. The suffering is of course lessened in the knowledge that you are all in it together, and the usual jolly banter was to be heard from within the reedy depths.

The usual game of hide and seek ensued, with the doughty crew doing a lot of seeking, and the balsam doing a lot of hiding.

Never one to follow the crowd, your correspondent was spotted looking the other way. No wonder his haul excited some derisory comments!

Here I am, desperately searching for a big one to fill my bag and gain some credibility.

In addition to the usual stinging nettles and nasty spikey thistles, the prevalence of goose grass/cleavers was striking. We found several dense mats of the stuff: Noel assured me that it can be made into a tasty soup.

There were some seed heads of the Great Reedmace poking up above the rest.

Wildlife was not much in evidence, but no sooner had Noel said he hadn’t seen any ladybirds this year than this one demanded to have its picture taken.

And Team Leader Julie saw several of these hanging on for dear life as we trampled through their home!

After a hot and it has to be said sweaty hour, we reconvened on the boardwalk and trudged back to the car park, laden with sacks, some of which were brimming with plucked up plants. That desperate search for my credibility mentioned above resulted in me mugging Sheila for her over-filled bag: the photographic record shows the strain I put myself under (ahem).

For the avoidance of doubt, should any be present, my actual bag is the less well filled one in my left hand; but every single little plant removed counts, doesn’t it?

Here is Team Leader Margaret’s message of thanks:

A very hot and heartfelt thank you to the 11 volunteers who came this morning to pull the blighters. I hope that you were so hot in bed this morning that the early hour was a pleasure not a chore. 

Not one of the plants we have pulled up this year has been in flower so there is absolutely no chance of them having reproduced so thank you for the supreme effort you are putting in. The proof of how effective we are will be seen next year. I would love to say that that was it for the year, but I fear there are still plants to be pulled. As you have all worked so hard we have decided to do the next pull in three weeks’ time. Location to be advised once we have walked the plot again. So far we have spent a total of 33 hours on this task alone. I think Duncan can tell us in the blog how many we totalled last year and the year before.

Thank you all. Enjoy a lovely afternoon.

Margaret for the team leaders.

[There were 34 hours spent on pulling up Himalayan Balsam in 2024, and 69.5 in 2023.]

The sightings board reveals the range of plants and animals that are being spotted on the Common. Recently these include

Black Horehound

Honeysuckle

Yellow rattle

Muntjac Common Lizard Marsh Helleborine Song thrush Buzzards overhead Reed warbler

And at last some butterflies have appeared: Speckled wood, meadow brown and ringlet are now in evidence here. Here’s a pristine speckled wood I found on School Common a few days ago.

And this Comma popped up in my garden recently

The ‘Peasant Poet’ John Clare delightfully called chiffchaffs ‘Pettichaps’, and ours are still singing, as well as a wren shouting loud enough in my garden to almost drown out the circling warplanes. The reed warbler near the Lower Street car park is still singing, as is the occasional blackcap. Yellowhammers are audible in the surrounding area, and we can still enjoy the reassuring screams of hurtling overhead swifts.

Not seen on the Common, but in my fairly small Southrepps garden I was pleased to see this striking Large Rose Sawfly

And finally for now, this Longhorn beetle

 

X marks the spot

X of course does not refer to the new name given to Twitter by its strange owner, but it is the evocative name given to the area of The Common just beyond Area B on the Warren Road side of Fox’s Beck. In truth, it would be better named “XXX**!XX” as a fair approximation of the language employed by our plucky Balsam Bashers as they encountered head-high nettles, goose grass and dried reed stems intent on blinding them.

Yesterday we had rain on and off all day, with the highlight being a thunderstorm in which lumps of hail hurled themselves down with un-called-for force. That would not have been welcome today, but thankfully that nasty stuff had moved off in order to top-up the North Sea, and we were rewarded for our volunteering zeal with dry and breezy conditions. Indeed, that breeze had been effective in drying out the vegetation, so we didn’t even suffer from that.

A select group of eight convened for a spot of Himalayan Balsam bashing at the appointed time, with your correspondent making a ninth a bit later. I missed being part of the main party heading over across Area B: very carefully to Area X as the ground has some deep ‘ankle breaker’ holes.

Noel is displaying an impressive halo! (He didn’t entertain us with much singing this time, the one offering being a heartfelt rendition of Katie Melua’s “This is the closest to crazy”.)

The beastly balsam is generally still quite small at this stage of its development, so the only thing to do is cast your eyes down and look in the undergrowth.

It’s a great place for playing hide and seek: where’s Kevin?

After an hour it was time to extract ourselves from the XXX**!XX area: Team Leader Margaret had counted us all out, and she counted us all back, complete with laden sacks. From the rear of the group it was entertaining to see the trailblazers sticking their free arms out to balance as the encountered the many holes in the ground: sadly this photo does not quite capture the moment.

Here’s the usual photo of the growing heap of rotting balsam. Already, Margaret estimates many thousand plants have been uprooted – but there will be plenty more popping up later!

I mentioned in the last posting that the Cotton Grass in the central area of the Common was doing very well, and I see that it has now even spread up to almost the bit of boardwalk heading towards the bridge over the untroubled water flowing down Fox’s Beck.

Team Leader Julie also caught a few of our special plants on camera today…

Meadow thistle on Area B

Marsh Orchid (we think??) with Ragged Robin on the central area.

Here is her message of thanks:

Hello all,

This is to thank the nine who turned out today to brave the unpredictable Area X to remove more Himalayan Balsam. It was not as wet as we thought even after the rain and hail yesterday which was a pleasant surprise!

We are attempting to prevent the invasive Himalayan  Balsam from moving into the Fen area adjacent, and we pulled a very impressive number of small plants today. Definitely counted in thousands, Margaret estimated 50,000, and every one plant pulled up helps us to halt its march across the Common.

Good job today team!

Thanks

Julie and the TLs

 

Summer now being officially underway, as you can tell by the drop in temperature and the reappearance of rain, there’s a fair bit of Nature about on the Commons and nearby. I have mentioned before that variant of Sod’s Law that says that only if you don’t have a camera with you will you come across something crying out to be photographed, and this time it was because I found a reed warbler singing its head off. Not in full view of course - they rarely are – but visible enough to make for a reasonable photo to share with you dear reader. By way of compensation, here’s one I did succeed in taking earlier: much earlier in fact – June 2011 to be exact.

I was back at the same spot (the thin bit of reedbed near the car park) a couple of days ago, this time armed with my camera (which spent most of the time inside my waterproof jacket, giving me a very portly appearance). I did actually see the bird, whizzing out of the reeds across the boardwalk into the willows opposite, but there was no way it was going to pose for me. I had been pleased a few minutes before to discover a singing reed bunting at the edge of the large reedbed we cut last winter. I was particularly pleased about this, as I had not heard one for the last couple of months and was afraid that this year they had given us a miss. It was too far off for me to get a good enough picture of it, so here’s another from way back in 2015.

I bumped into our friends Tim and Jane on a sunny visit to Warren Woods a few days before this. It appeared that Tim was engrossed in photographing the ground, but it turned out that he had found a group of Green Tiger Beetles, and he was very excited about it. His enthusiasm is infectious, so I was soon equally engrossed; dogs Basil and Nellie less so. Here’s one of Tim’s resulting pictures: it took some taking, as they are very active.

Not on the Common, but still in the village, I came across a couple of robins having a rare old punch-up. We’ve seen it often enough on the telly, but here it was in front of my eyes at the junction of Clipped Hedge Lane and Sandy Lane. They were rolling around in the dust, completely oblivious to me, and it really looked as though one would kill the other (see https://www.birdspot.co.uk/bird-brain/do-robins-fight-to-the-death) . They eventually broke apart when I said “ahem” but I don’t know if either was injured. I did see a robin at the same place the next day, but whether his rival is still about is anyone’s guess.