Hollywood beckons, and The Pit opens

The exciting news that came out last week was that the video some of us volunteers contributed to way back in June (see https://southreppscommonsvolunteers.blogspot.com/2019/06/lights-camera-action.html) is now out! NWT have produced two videos as part of their Wildlife in Common project,  one of which features Southrepps Common and its volunteers. Those of you who took part gave Oscar winning performances - thank you!

The films are:

Wildlife in Common: History and Wildlife (10.46 mins)

Wildlife in Common: People and Wildlife (7.26 mins). This is the one that stars Southrepps - and the specific bit can be found between 2.17 and 3.12 mins.

However, both films are well worth a watch. 

The video containing the Southrepps performances is available on YouTube, at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lY-l6Z9Lljc or if you go to the NWT website you can get lots of information on the project and see both of the films (select 'Commons on Film' on the right hand side of the page: (https://www.norfolkwildlifetrust.org.uk/wildlife-in-norfolk/commons/wildlife-in-common)

Enjoy, and thanks to all those who took part.

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Back in the more usual volunteering territory of mud and sharp thorns, the latest working party moved to Pit Common. Keen and attentive readers of this drivel blog will remember that in September big diggers excavated The Pit, which had become clogged with Bulrushes and reeds and silted up with, well, silt. After the diggers left, it looked like this:

Keen and attentive weather watchers may remember that since then there have been some torrential downpours. Such was its attractiveness to wildlife immediately, that a Kingfisher was spotted there one recent morning. Sadly, fish though it might, it seems unlikely that the bird was successful so soon after the pond was dry and lifeless, but perhaps in the near future…

Anyway, the early cutting programme for the SSSI part of The Common having been completed on schedule, the willing workforce turned their attention to Pit Common. Now there is a pond to view, it is necessary to clear some of the scrub that has grown up round it, obscuring its delights from sight.

At the start of the session on a grim, grey and unpromising morning, The Pit looked like this:

Defying the weather forecast, 13 doughty volunteers turned up in the damp early gloom. Pit Common is not our usual venue, so it was a rather different session for most of us. Some were raking up grass that had been cut earlier;

Some wielded loppers and saws, doing battle with the vicious thorns of bramble and dog rose;

Two of our top brush cutter operators deployed their noisy machines around the edge of the pond, and at the side of the path leading up from it. Having damaged a tooth recently, the racket made by those brush cutters sounded too much like the dentist’s instruments of torture for my liking.

And some were clearing the newly cut material – every little helps!

Not everything was different: we loaded the heavy, wet material onto a dragsheet, which was then hauled by hand to a dumping site under the trees. Tipping it over was a challenge, requiring quite a prayer meeting to achieve.

Some of the recidivist reeds raising green shoots above the rising waters were close enough to shore to be plucked out by determined, but increasingly wet people.

The pond had of course been completely swamped by reeds and bulrushes, and the whole purpose of the exercise was to remove as many as possible. Inevitably, they will fight back, and no doubt by the summer there will again be cover for the moorhens which usually breed here.

Two hours on, the day had brightened and the threat of rain lifted for a while, and it was time to pack up and wander off back up the road.

After the session, The Pit now looks like this:

Here is Team Leader Kevin’s message of thanks:

A big thank you to everyone who turned up to tidy the Pit Common on this damp and soggy morning. Fortunately, the weather didn't dampen the spirit of the volunteers who gamely raked, lopped, sawed and brush cut the area in question.

All in all a job well done.

We may call a smaller working party later this month in order to finish cutting back the branches along the path.

However, for the moment thank you once again.

Kevin

Taking the Mic

One of the unwanted invasive plants on The Common is Michaelmas Daisy, which has either ‘escaped’ from nearby gardens or possibly been deliberately planted. It spreads like crazy, choking out the wild flowers and wide range of grasses for which the section adjacent to Warren Road is otherwise so ideal. In recent years it has become an increasing problem, and now Natural England requires that it is cut before it sets seed, with the intention of weakening it over the next few years. Combined with the revised requirement to cut the central area by the end of September in order to weaken the encroaching reeds, this has placed a new burden on us volunteers, especially at a time when holidays are still being taken and numbers are down.

At least now The Commons are owned and managed by NWT there is more help to be had, in the form of George, the Reserve Officer responsible for Southrepps Commons, and the other NWT volunteers he can draft in from elsewhere. This being the end of September and a critical time, he did just that for two sessions, either side of the Sunday working party on 29^th. To set the ball rolling, three doughty old (I use the word advisedly) Southrepps hands carried out some rather arduous preparatory work on Monday 23^rd, to give the NWT contingent something to get their teeth into on the following Wednesday.

After welcome overnight rain, the autumnal sun made the place especially attractive, and on the way along the boardwalk this pretty impressive cobweb was in the spotlight.

Team Leader Margaret and your frequently absent correspondent concentrated on hoiking out a fair proportion of the alder saplings from the section due to be clear cut – the one known so poetically as Area A. This is far better than allowing the Grizzly to chop through them, which merely has the effect of coppicing them and creating a bigger problem later on. The tool of choice is the rather heavy Tree Popper, which grips the sapling low down, and using a long lever, pulls it out, preferably roots and all. Those that are too resistant need to have their radiating roots sawn through; a tiring job, especially when the sun breaks through, defying the Met. Office’s confident predictions.

Meanwhile, Grizzly Operator John cut down the Michaelmas Daisies and Golden Rod on the other side of the boardwalk. (Legal disclaimer: I of course mean that John was operating the mower called Grizzly, not that he is in any way Grizzly.)

John is probably our most experienced operator of this mower, having been at the controls ever since it was bought in 2005. He said this particular cut was the hardest he had ever experienced, probably because we have traditionally cut mostly dead material, whilst this was full of sap and vigour, as well as being tangled up by bindweed. It won’t be much fun to move either.

Your regular correspondent having taken sun-soaked refuge on the French Riviera (ooh – get him!), Team Leader Margaret takes up the blogging reins:

What a busy week we have had on the Common! Last Wednesday a small team from Cley came to help us meet the new cutting regime; we knew we could not do it without help. An offer was sent out to all volunteers that if they had nothing better to do then they were welcome to come and help. Unfortunately, the e-mail was sent only to the team leaders who already knew the details so unsurprisingly only myself, another team leader and his wonderful wife turned up!

We all set to with enthusiasm and were able to clear the Michaelmas Daisies that John had cut two days before, and then we moved across to cut the triangle left from the previous Sunday’s working party. The three of us were able to demonstrate the brilliance of the winch and we have made three converts to its usefulness. Gosh, what hard workers Ken, Ian and George are; we SCV bods called it a day long before they did.

Here they are getting to grips with our methods:

Then on Sunday we had our usual working party, the aim being to finish all of area A. The omens were not good as we knew that our numbers would be down as unsurprisingly our volunteers have other things to do, particularly when heavy rain is forecast. They rose to the occasion however, and 12 wonderful people turned out to rake off the cut material, which was very heavy with the ground under foot getting more slippery by the minute. We all got soaked to the skin but still managed to have the customary coffee break sheltering under the trees, happily devouring Julia’s raffle winning shortbread.

After two hours of fun-filled pulling we called it a day.

Forks at the end: all volunteers have dissolved like the wicked witch of the west

This time your current correspondent managed to correctly send out an e-mail asking for help for Monday, and 6 people arrived happy and smiling to help Ken and Ian, as well as George who had been delayed checking that no harm had come to Cley due to the high tide and winds, not to mention the rain.  We are pleased to report that the reserve escaped unscathed. The 8 of us under a beautiful blue sky and warm sun polished off the rest of area A; an amazing achievement.

The NWT team then moved south of the beck to where John D had been cutting more Fen. John H set up the winch, and we all retired for a well-deserved lunch.

George decided that now would be a good time to turn up, and we cut and raked more of the fen.

Although we know that the land and responsibility belongs to NWT, thank you for your time and muscles - it was great to be able to work with them to care for such a super reserve.

Here is Margaret’s message of thanks to the Sunday volunteers:

I really can't say a big enough thank you to the 12 brave souls who got soaked to the skin this morning. We were fortunate that it was warm but still very wet, which made the cut material heavy to handle and the tarpaulins slippery and difficult to turn. So thank you.

Now for an apology I was meant to send an email about the start times for the extra sessions being run by NWT to complete the altered cutting programme well, I sent the email but brilliantly only to myself so no-one but me and Kevin and Linda turned up, they were unfortunate to have asked me directly!

There is one more extra session which is tomorrow, start time is 9.30 but the NWT crew will be on site until about 3 pm, so if you would like to join in at any time between 9.30 and 3 you would be most welcome (No-one is expected to work for the whole time.) The tasks involved will be to complete area A where we were working this morning which is on the Warren Road side of the beck and then moving to the South side to finish clearing the fen, where all the orchid grow.

We will be running another working party in two weeks’ time most probably at the pit, to capitalise on the excellent clearance that George has arranged there. Watch this space for more information.

Thank you all again for your wet and soggy support and to Julia for the shortbread she kindly donated having won it in the Southrepps Society raffle on Thursday: the rest of us would have just eaten it! It was much appreciated.

Margaret.

And the Monday one:

Yes, another thank-you. Today 6 volunteers turned out to help the NWT team from Cley and they were rewarded with a beautiful day. So thank you so much to them. We managed to clear away all the cut material left from Sunday’s working party. The NWT team moved on to south of the beck and cut and raked some more fen. The very central area is to remain uncut at this time, but it may be cut later in the year: until that time enjoy the wonderful display of grass of Parnassus and the Devils bit scabious.

Thank you too, to George, Ken and Ian from NWT.

Margaret

Hot and sticky, so they got stuck in

This bunking off lark is now officially entrenched. Once again your usual (or should that now be ‘occasional’?) correspondent having something else to do on working party Sunday, it falls to our now increasingly usual correspondent Julie to magnificently rise to the blogging challenge, with an introductory paragraph from Team Leader Kevin:

As usually happens a small team had turned out earlier in the week to carry out a pre cut and prepare the winching site. This allowed the volunteers on Sunday to get straight on with the job of clearing the cut reeds and grass.

Sunday turned out to be a very warm morning and twelve hardy souls turned out to clear as much as they could on the area near Warren Road. It soon turned from warm to hot but our leader for today put his back into it and led by example.

He did have help of course...

As usual, the coffee, tea and biscuits were most welcome at the halfway stage...

Then it was back to work again...

The loads today were big but reasonably light, but still required some effort to manoeuvre onto the heaps...

This can be a great spectator sport .... though our spectator here (other than me) was actually fleeing the scene having nearly had the load tipped onto her! Health and Safety worked well in the event!

 It’s not all hard work though... there is always time to catch up on the week’s events while walking the filled sheets to the dumping ground...the winch rope is 100m long, but I am glad to say you don’t have to be Usain Bolt to keep up with it!

 It was a day for wildlife today....we saw red kites and shrews...if our usual blogger were in attendance he would have some Shakespearean quote about taming the latter I am sure! However, all I managed was to capture on camera a friendly frog who was happy to pose for a picture!

 It was a great morning's work, with volunteers staying over the two hours to finish as much as they could, despite being told that it could be left for another time!

NWT have gained a lovely Common and some fantastic volunteers.

Here is Team Leader Kevin’s message of thanks:

Dear All,

A big thank you goes out to the volunteers who turned out today and threw themselves into clearing the area around Warren Road. Despite the hot and sticky conditions and with the sun beating down, they manfully and womanfully kept their spirits up and stuck to the task. They even went beyond the allotted time - such was their desire to clear as much as they could.

Once again a big thank you. We hope to see you in a fortnight's time.

Kevin

Dig the Pit!

The great day arrived last week, when contractors moved in with big shiny yellow machines to dig out The Pit. Pit Common is one of the five sites comprising NWT Southrepps Commons, and despite the care and attention lavished on it in the past by Southrepps Commons Trust, Nature, in the form of Greater Reedmace, as the botanists know it, or Bulrushes to the rest of us, had completely choked it.

In earlier times, when there was still a creditable pond there, valiant efforts had been made to control the invading plants…

… but eventually defeat had to be conceded. It was with great relief that SCT could hand this problem over to Norfolk Wildlife Trust, which has quickly risen to the challenge. The strategy was to go back to square one: dig out the sludge accumulated since the last overhaul a decade or so ago, down to the clay bottom, trying not to go beyond. As well as the Reedmace, Common Reed had multiplied too much, and that pernicious invader Crassula helmsii had also seen fit to join the party. The effect of all this was that the pond had become dry throughout much of the year, and was no longer suitable for the wildlife that used to thrive there. It had also lost its attractive appearance.

Thanks are due to Team Leader Kevin for many of these pictures. Here is one of the diggers at work:

And here is one at rest:

The keen-eyed reader will have spotted a notice in these pictures. This was put there by NWT to warn the public about the presence of heavy machinery and to explain what the work is trying to achieve. (Is it permissible at this point to say this was heavy plant removing some slightly less heavy plants? No – Ed.)

The Pit can be enjoyed from the grassy area behind it, graced by two benches, but also from the road. That has been harder to appreciate recently, as so much vegetation had grown up at the roadside edge. Sporadic assaults on it with loppers, sickles, billhooks and suchlike medieval weaponry had been made, but the stuff will keep growing back and blocking the view. A JCB however, can sort it out in no time:

As mentioned above, the contractors were asked to go down to the clay bottom, but no further. It is now clear that some of the unwanted rhizomes are growing up through the clay, so some thought may need to be given to how they can be removed, if at all.

It is well understood that this is not a one-off job: the plants will recover, and in time choke the pond again, so fans of big yellow diggers will get another sighting in another decade or so.  Meanwhile, here is how it looks at the roadside at the time of writing. All it needs now is some water!

 Southrepps Commons Volunteers are not yet allowed to play about with big shiny yellow diggers, but their work continues nonetheless. The next working party is on Sunday 15^th, but as usual some preparatory work was necessary, so that that the eager volunteers can get straight down to work in the dim dawn light at 9.00 am. Your correspondent again has a note saying he can’t come to that fiesta of fun, but did manage to fall out of bed in time to help with the preparation session, which was unusually held almost a week before the main event, rather than the customary Saturday. Such a shame he was unaware that the start time had been moved forward an hour, but hey ho, it’s quite nice to turn up just in time to help with the clearing up and the convivial cup of tea and biscuit. 

Summer one day, autumn the next

Another two weeks have gone by since the last working party, but in the meantime the team leaders met with our two principal contacts with NWT on 22^nd, to talk through issues around the cutting programme. The Countryside Stewardship funding arrangement is the successor to the Higher Level Stewardship scheme, our bit of which expired last autumn. It turns out that CS is widely criticised for its inflexibility, and the penalties for not keeping to the imposed schedule can be severe. Of most immediate relevance is the deadline of 30^th September for the completion of the cutting of the central part of the Common; this is required in order to continue to knock back the reeds which are encroaching into that valuable species-rich patch. The balancing act is to meet that target whilst minimising as much as possible the impact on the glorious flowering plants there – in particular, Grass of Parnassus, Devil’s Bit Scabious and Eyebright. We have already cut back as much of the reeds as possible, and pulled by hand those growing amongst the aforementioned flowers; the final cut will be left to as close to the end of September as can be managed, to give the plants the best chance of setting seed. And, of course, a healthy and diverse plant community leads to a rich diversity of insects and other invertebrates, and they in turn are bird food.

The next challenge will be the areas to the north of the Beck, beside Warren Road. We cut each half on alternate years, and this year it is the turn of the section closer to Lower Street, known imaginatively as Area A. It is a massive tangle of vegetation, beautifully rich in plant life, but also very hard work to deal with, especially in warm weather. It, and the even more excitingly named Area B on the other side of the boardwalk, is becoming dominated by an invasive garden escapee, Michaelmas Daisy, which along with the spreading reeds will also be cut on Area B. This is all a lot of work for our magnificent volunteers in a shortened period of time, and it is likely that NWT will need to provide extra assistance if the deadline is to be hit.

The boardwalk is needing increasing amounts of maintenance and repairs, and we were pleased to learn that there is a team within NWT with considerable expertise, which can be drawn on if the need arises.

Another big job to be undertaken by a contractor on NWT’s behalf is the restoration of The Pit, which should be dug out in the next few weeks. We can then all look forward to it looking like a pond again.

The next working party was on Sunday 1^st September – the first day of meteorological autumn apparently, but still pretty warm after the early morning freshness. Your increasingly irregular correspondent having bunked off again, it fell to Team Leader Julie to gamely pick up the blogging baton:

Six of us took part in Saturday’s preparations for Sunday’s full working party. There was some deliberation as to what we were to do.....

Anyway, once agreed, the remaining reed in the corner of Area G was soon dispatched ready to be moved on Sunday.

 We obviously left the wildflower patch that Margaret has lovingly hand reeded and which now is full of Devils Bit Scabious and Grass of Parnassus...

Area A met us with a huge area of Michaelmas Daisy which seems to have almost shot up and spread overnight..

So it was decided that this had to go first in this area. So Grizzly was put to work tackling this, whilst the rest of us cut back the scrub around the preferred winch site. The result was a clear winch site

and lots of reed and daisy to be stacked by Sunday’s willing volunteers...

For the main event on Sunday, sixteen willing volunteers turned out in the glorious sunshine. Warm enough to be working in, but not so hot as past sessions have been.

The majority set to clearing the heaps of vegetation cut by Grizzly yesterday... unfortunately the two team leaders had failed to put a key piece of winch equipment in the wheelbarrow, so sheets were hand pulled until someone made the journey back to the container to collect the missing equipment (whoops - still learning - there is a lot to remember you know!)....

A few people were dispatched to clear the small amount of reed left on Area G (again all by hand)..

Soon, however, normal service was resumed...

..including people falling in a heap on the piles of reed in the attempts stack the vegetation ...

It takes a lot of effort to build these heaps especially when the sheet has gone and you are desperately trying to stop it all rolling back down again..

We were progressing very well by tea break, so on the restart, a few of us took to cutting back more scrub in preparation for later weeks’ winch sites..

All in all it was an excellent mornings work...Grizzly got a little excited by its run out today and opted to throw itself partially off the boardwalk by the container leaving its ‘handler’ hanging on tight to prevent both wheels going down....it was all hands on deck really so no photos I am afraid..but a team effort meant it was recovered and safely put away before it could wreak more havoc!!