Oh for a Nightingale

 

We don’t get Nightingales on Southrepps Commons, which is a great pity because we seem to have some of the right habitat for them. John Keats in his famous ode to the bird mentions the “… verdurous glooms and winding messy ways" where it can be found, and we've a few of those. We might not have Nightingales, more's the pity, but we do have Himalayan Balsam, more's the pity, and it tends to grow in choking profusion in some of those “verdurous glooms” – the haunts of plentiful sting-y and bite-y things.

And so it was that last Thursday, with the thermometer already registering over 20⁰ C, four brave souls ventured forth to remove as much of this pernicious plant as could be done before heat exhaustion took its toll.

Team Leaders Margaret and Julie were admirably prepared for the fray:

Despite the general lack of pleasure involved in the task, it is strangely compelling; there’s always another clump near the lot you promised yourself would do for today, and so the self-imposed torture goes on. Nonetheless, after the length of time it takes to play a football match (excluding extra time and penalties), the decision was taken to cease and indeed desist, and so we gratefully did.

The plants might be pretty...

...but they grow prodigiously, and with few (if any) predators they quickly out-compete all the other vegetation (except nettles).

Meanwhile, three of the crack Grizzly driver team were busy performing what has come to be known as the pre-cut for the forthcoming working party. After an abrupt change of plan generally only associated with leadership election campaigns it was decided that the central area of the Common should be the place to be given the treatment first. For several years now it has been Natural England’s requirement that this and the other alternative location on the Warren Road side of the Beck should be cut between August and the end of September. This is unfortunate on two counts: those two months tend to be far hotter for working in than when we used to start cutting, and we volunteers are mostly not in the first flush of youth; and secondly, many of the most iconic plants for the site tend to be in flower. As it happens, at this time the area was also being botanically surveyed to provide data on what effect the current cutting regime is having on the plant community there, and it was discovered that plants such as Grass of Parnassus have not yet started to flower – so if the cut is done now, the flowers should still be able to delight us all.

In addition to those two tasks, mowing and raking off was done at Pit Common by the self-identifying Fab Four – more hot work, but a great result.

On the subject of the Pit, our NWT warden George has recently visited it to attempt to control the horrible invasive Crassula that has so rapidly smothered it, so we must wait to see if he has had any success.

Here is Team Leader Julie’s messages of thanks:

A big thank you goes out to the four individuals who pulled Himalayan Balsam today.  It is always amazing how much each individual person can achieve in a couple of hours. You can certainly see where the volunteers have been.

On another note I would like to just say a huge thank you to the individuals that work so hard in the background on the Southrepps Commons and probably do not get the recognition they deserve:

* The team that turns out regularly during the summer to mow the Pit area to keep the pathways clear to the benches and to keep sightlines from the benches to the Pit clear.

* The team that turns out before all the Sunday work parties on the Fen and Reed beds, piloting 'Grizzly' to cut the reed ready for the work party and also clear the dump sites for the winch to operate in.

* The survey team who spend hours at this time of year surveying specified reference areas to record the plant and moss species so that NWT can supply Natural England with scientific information on the effectiveness of the Fen maintenance that we do.

* The admin personnel who take all the information from the sightings board to maintain a record for NWT on the bird/animal life on the commons; feed statistics on volunteer hours on the commons to NWT to assist in their funding bids; maintain the blog and generally keep communication flowing between the Commons Volunteers and NWT.

WHAT A TEAM WE HAVE - THANK YOU!

Regards, Julie

(What Julie modestly omitted from the list above is the contribution she makes. She, and also Margaret, puts in a great deal of time and effort in setting up our work sessions and telling us all when and where to turn up, thanking us for our efforts afterwards (which is always much appreciated), liaising with NWT about what needs to be done and when, welcoming new recruits and generally keeping the whole show on the road.)

The main working party, the first of the current season, convened on Sunday morning. We were presented with a large amount of material to clear away as a result of the sterling work done three days earlier, which was already being rapidly added to by our doughty Grizzly operator.

The winch was set up in the Alder carr not far from the Beck. This afforded the doughty winch crew pleasantly shady working conditions…

… but they had to contend with a temperamental machine. The start chord was jamming (email already sent to NWT warden George about the replacement parts needed before we use it again)!

We had a good turnout of 11 equally doughty volunteers today, enjoying a workout in the sunshine.

The almost rain-free and very warm weather lately had had the effect of drying the vegetation nicely, making for relatively easy raking and pitchforking of it onto the drag sheets. At the dumping site, tipping the stuff out onto heaps was also easier than it often is, accompanied by that evocative scent of new-mown hay. Nonetheless, it was still warm work, and the half-time break was as welcome as ever.

After the break, one man continued to mow…

... and the rest of us continued to dispose of the "arisings". By the end of the session we found we had surprised ourselves at how much we had done. It’s a satisfying feeling to look back across the wide expanse of fen and realise that what seemed a daunting task at the outset had been achieved – thanks to the excellent teamwork from all concerned.

Here is Team Leader Julie’s message of thanks for this session too:

Hello all.

It was a beautiful day on the Common this morning. Huge thanks go to the 11 volunteers who turned out to help with the first session clearing the central fen area.  We shifted everything that had been cut which was amazing.  I think we were all thankful for the last-minute change of 'venue' - the arisings are much lighter and drier on the central fen area. Hopefully, you have all gone home to relax this afternoon!

We will return to the Central area in two weeks’ time (21st August) and look forward to seeing those of you that can make it then.  A confirmation email will be sent (as usual) a few days before.

Enjoy the sunshine.

Regards, Julie (for the Team Leaders)

Balsam Battalion forward!

 

Enthusiasts of stinging nettles would find the Warren Road end of the boardwalk across the main Common very much to their taste at this time of year, for it is at that extreme termination of the wonderful winding path through the reeds and grassy fen that Urtica dioica flourishes. It’s not clear to me at least why it grows so strongly just there, right along the edges of the boardwalk, ready to be a literal pain to people with legs more attractive than mine, and thus likely to be uncovered in this exceptionally warm weather. (That’s not to say the legs belonging to your usual correspondent are unattractive; it’s just that the attraction extends no further than the various biting and stinging creatures lurking about what is, let’s face it, a nature reserve – and so those legs must, from necessity, remain clothed.)

“What on earth is he wittering on about?” I hear our faithful reader cry. It’s just this: on another blisteringly hot day (which presumably explains the astonishingly painful blister on my thumb caused by over-enthusiastic boardwalk brushing) 14 volunteers turned out for another couple of hours of penance – for which sins we must forever remain in ignorance. As was the case last time, one of the tasks of the day was to trim back the vegetation encroaching on the boardwalk edges, making progress along that highway difficult, and in the case of the nettly end, potentially painful. And we did it! With great aplomb Brush Cutter operators Noel and Kevin, backed up by broom, rake, pitchfork and lopper operators John, John, Louise, Julie, Carolyn and your own correspondent, completed the trimming along one edge of the entire length of the boardwalk – including those pesky nettles.

While we were enjoying that, the Balsam Battalion forced their way into the undergrowth to haul out by the roots as many Himalayan Balsam plants as they could lay their hands on. This was not without incident, at least for Team Leader Margaret, who reportedly had some sort of disrobing turn, followed by falling face first in the vicinity of a wasps’ nest (getting a sting or two in the process), and then wading into Fox’s Beck only to discover it came up above the top of her Wellies. A certain amount of hilarity amongst her otherwise sympathetic and supportive colleagues was occasioned.

Balsam Bashers like to boast of the enormous heights to which these invasive plants grow, and since there is such a lot of fake news about, we must insist on photographic evidence, so here’s some:

Despite the stifling jungle-like heat and humidity, there’s still some satisfaction to be had from the way the stems go “thwock” when you break them: serves them right!

An hour in, there was of course the usual very welcome break for refreshments, in the cool shade beside our tool store.

These breaks are well named, for they seem to break your usual correspondent's concentration - much like a test match batsman losing his wicket straight after tea. It happened last time, when I reported that I "could not find my bits". This time I had forgotten where Noel and I had hidden our tools in case they were purloined in our absence. A lot of walking up and down the boardwalk (particularly the shady bits) was necessary before I had to give in and ask Noel where we had left them. He was good enough to tell me, meaning I had to leave the shady bits and go back to brushing in the broiling sunshine. I was suitably grateful, of course.

Strolling back along the boardwalk at the end of another gruelling session, it was pleasant to pause in the cool of the bridge over Fox’s Beck. This stream is wonderful – it never dries out and is always crystal clear. It was tempting to lie down in it today!!

Here is Team Leader Margaret’s message of thanks for today’s work:

Hello all.

Whenever it is my turn to write these thank you messages I always feel they are so inadequate as a means of thanking you all for your hard work. !4 crazy folk braved heat, wasps, streams and trip hazards. Thanks to their hard work we can all now pass more freely down the boardwalk, much appreciated by walkers, dogs and pushchair occupants. We also took battle to the Himalayan balsam. Having been pulling the stuff for 18 years I can say that the area we were working today is less heavily infested than it used to be, so the task is worthwhile.

So thank you all very much for your help and support.

 In two weeks’ time we start the cutting programme and work will commence on the Warren Rd side of the beck. Before that I invite those who are able, willing or just plain daft, to another balsam bash on Thursday 4th August 9.00 start. Meet at the Warren Road side bench. Long sleeves and long trousers are essential.

Thanks again, enjoy your well-earned rest and see you all soon.

Margaret for the team leaders.

 And finally,

A couple of the Team Leaders recently met Aaron, a botanical expert from NWT, to look at the wildflower plot started last year at Pit Common. Between them they found sulphur clover, oxeye daisy, Knapweed, wild carrot and yellow rattle. It’s gratifying to see such good progress already. On a gloomier note, the extent to which invasive Crassula is carpeting the exposed bed of the pond is alarming; the more so because successfully and permanently removing it is so difficult.

 

The Magnificent Seven, plus your correspondent

 

Phew, what a scorcher! Yesterday (Sunday 10^th) was forecast to be hot, so an early-ish start was necessary for our first working party since March. We basically need to avoid disturbing the Commons during Spring and Summer, but there are some jobs that simply have to be done. One of these is to trim back the vegetation along the edges of the boardwalk across the main site. The stuff sits there deceitfully growing only modestly for weeks on end, and then suddenly, when it is least convenient, shoots up massively, overhanging the boardwalk and making enjoying the place more difficult than it should be. So once or twice in the Summer it needs cutting back, and the fun element is hard to find.

The other essential job at this time of year is to return to our never-ending struggle to keep the pesky invasive Himalayan Balsam under control. We thought that we had almost eliminated it a year or two ago, but it’s certainly fighting back this year. Now here’s a thing: this plant has evolved to thrive in the Himalayas, which let’s face it are rather more elevated than Southrepps, so why is it also so happy at such a low altitude? It just isn’t fair.

The call to arms having been issued, eight hardy volunteers convened, braced for a couple of hours of very warm work. Your correspondent had had the foresight to prepare a flask of cold drink, and was quite put out on arrival to discover that it had not come with him. 15 minutes of raking cut reeds provided all the proof necessary of the foolishness of this mistake, so a hasty trip back home was required to rectify the situation. This should not in any way be construed as skiving, dear reader, but it was nice to get some air moving across the fevered brow.

Eight volunteers is quite a small group, and well short of our average turnout, so it was not going to be possible to complete either task. Linda, Den and Team Leader Margaret plunged into the undergrowth to tackle the Balsam. They did in time return, bearing tales of gigantic plants of exceptional vigour, so much more Balsam Bashing is needed. Regrettably, no photos were taken on this occasion.

The other five volunteers concentrated on the boardwalk edge. I say ‘edge’ advisedly, as the sensible course was to cut back only one side of the boardwalk, in order to improve the situation for the greatest distance in the time available. Brush cutter operators Kevin and Noel operated their brush cutters to good effect, while the two equally doughty rake and broom operators Ken and I raked and brushed for all we were worth.

The fifth member, Team Leader Julie, wielded loppers on overhanging branches to great effect: the results are there for all regular visitors to the place to appreciate.

As modelled here by Noel, we needed to be protectively dressed in long-sleeved shirts, trousers and boots, so it really was hot work – thanks goodness I went back for my drink!

Here's how it looked before we started…

… and after

 After an hour of such heat torture, a welcome break was called: being British, of course we had a nice hot cup of tea or coffee – what splendid pluck!

Having already lost all touch with reality, at the break your correspondent caused a certain amount of hilarity by wondering aloud where he had left his bits. The missing cold drink incident had shattered his confidence. We were also full of admiration for Noel’s needleworking skills, as evidenced by the natty patching of his jeans; he held his audience enthralled.

At last a halt was called and as we walked back to the boardwalk entrance, we could admire our handiwork.

Everyone can admire the point of all this effort when they visit. This year the Cotton Grass has been much more impressive than recently. This is on the central area where we hand weeded the reed out - it was worth it!! 

The orchids are magnificent too.

Here is Team Leader Julie’s message of thanks, along with the schedule of forthcoming working parties.

Hello all

We hope that you are enjoying the sunshine.

Firstly, a huge thank you goes to the 8 hardy (or mad?) volunteers who turned out in the heat this morning to pull some Himalayan Balsam and to cut back the reed and grass at the edge of the boardwalk. At the start of the day the boardwalk was very overgrown and difficult to walk along...the volunteers managed to clear a large section of boardwalk edging to enable people to be able to walk along it easily.

There is still a lot to do with the boardwalk edging and we will be returning in two weeks time (24th July) to tackle more clearance work. 

Following this we will be starting on the reed cutting to fit in with the required schedule for cutting the fen areas. Below is the schedule of work party dates for the rest of 2022 and into 2023:

Sunday 24th July (9am)

Sunday 7th August (9am)

Sunday 21st August (9am)

Sunday 4th September (9am)

Sunday 18th September (9am)

Sunday 2nd October (9am)

Sunday 16th October (9am)

Sunday 30th October (10am)

Sunday 13th November (10am)

Sunday 27th November (10am)

Sunday 11th December (10am)

Sunday 8th January 2023 (10am)

Sunday 22nd January (10am)

Sunday 5th February (10am)

Sunday 19th February (10am)

Sunday 5th March (10am)

Sunday 19th March (10am) 

Spring starts in a rush

 

The cutting season proper having finished at the end of last month, this was the last scheduled work party of the winter. We had been thwarted by the weather in completing all of our tasks on the main common, but no such impediments affected this session, on Pit Common. With a week of almost wall-to-wall sunshine, Spring appears to have happened in a rush. Flowers are blooming, bees and butterflies are making early tentative flights, and the frogs on both our ponds have been busy spawning. Here’s some spawn in the secluded Scouts’ Pond.

And the birds are starting to sing. On that subject, I recently read about some clever research looking at the creeping degradation of that glory of the season; the dawn chorus. Rachel Carson warned the world of the catastrophe coming if the use of pesticides was allowed to continue unchecked, calling her hugely influential book Silent Spring. Well, fortunately it’s not silent, yet, and we can still marvel at the racket made by some birds at least. A walk the other day revealed my first chiffchaffs of the year, along with robins, blackbirds, song thrush, dunnocks, noisy great tits and many spirit-soaring larks ascending. The research, using data from the British Trust for Ornithology’s long-running Breeding Bird Survey and other citizen science datasets from across Europe and North America, explored how the soundtrack of spring has changed. Going back over 25 years, records of breeding birds in various locations were combined with recordings of those species, from the excellent Xeno Canto online database. (This is well worth exploring, at www.xeno-canto.org. A huge number of recordings of hundreds of species are there for free, so if you want to know what a particular bird sounds like, this is the site to visit.)

The sad fact is that the soundscape is greatly reduced from only 25 years ago; there are drastically fewer individual birds, and the number of species occurring at many places has also fallen dramatically. So whilst the dawn chorus here might still be loud, it is no longer as richly varied as it was only very recently. The value of this research is that it takes a step back in time, allowing for an accurate comparison with today. A phenomenon known as ‘Shifting Baseline Syndrome’ means that younger people who have never experienced past abundance can only compare today’s position to their own earliest memories, and thus the true extent of decline is hidden. Techniques such as this can help decision makers understand the extent of the loss, and with luck do something to reverse it – which is where we volunteers come in.

The Magnificent Dozen convened at Pit Common on another beautiful sunny morning; ironic perhaps, since we had arguably more pressing work to do a month ago when the weather was so awful we couldn’t get it done. The work for this session was to cut the vegetation between the pond and the road; give the grass a light mow, prior to most of it being left to grow for the season, with some paths mown through it; and to create a dumping area away from general view for future use.

Here's how the chosen area looked before our attention

The assembled company consisted of hewers of wood…

… wielders of loppers…

… the man who came to mow…

… the man who came to cut brush…

… and the highly skilled builder of dead hedges…

As is traditional, half way through the session came the half-time break, including particularly welcome chocolate biscuits. A highly attentive crew gathered round Team Leader Julie while she filled us in on NWT’s management plan for the site. We’re anxiously awaiting the results of the ensuing test!

Fed, watered and briefed, we all went back to work with a will, and were pretty pleased with ourselves at the end of the session.

Here’s the finished dead hedge – impressive eh?

The area cleared of a prickly mass of mainly dead brambles is now ready for what we can dump there in the future, to rot down quietly out of sight.

The mown area

The roadside verge

The Pit itself is looking good

As mentioned above, both our ponds have had some very busy frogs, and hopefully toads. There are large clumps of spawn in the Pit, albeit not easily photographed in the bright sunlight.

As well as the frogspawn, the bottom of this picture also shows the wretched invasive Crassula which is infesting both ponds. 

And on the subject of invasive pernicious weeds, our next session is likely to be to remove Himalayan Balsam once it shows itself. And so the world turns, as it must…

 

Here is Team Leader Julie’s message of thanks:

Hello all

We hope that you are all enjoying the lovely blue skies and sunshine we are being treated to.  We held our final work party of the season today at the Pit. Twelve volunteers made short work of the first grass cutting of the season along with clearing a large area towards the back of the site - which will be used as our future dump site (out of sight from the road).

On behalf of all the team leaders (and NWT) we would like to thank all those who have given their time over the season on the SSSI Common, School Common and at the Pit. It is amazing how much our group of dedicated volunteers achieve across the three areas. NWT are very grateful and always impressed with what we achieve.

For those of you who are happy to do it there will be some smaller work parties from around May tackling the very invasive Himalayan Balsam. I will put out an email when these are scheduled.  Otherwise we look forward to seeing you all in the late summer when we are allowed to cut the reed on the main SSSI Common again.

Enjoy your spring and summer.

Regards, Julie (for the TLs)