Return to the Groves of Balsam

 After the soggy foray two weeks ago into the domain of the pernicious Himalayan Balsam, it fell to Team Leaders Julie and Margaret to finish the job off a couple of days ago. A team comprising of only team leaders eh? Perhaps they concentrated too much on appraising each other’s performance and productivity, or maybe they were admiring each other’s party outfits…

At least it didn’t rain on them…but as the photo shows they got soaked anyway in the reed…which is about double the height it was a week and a half before!

Being dedicated types, they still managed to admire the other vegetation, being particularly impressed by the ragged robin and orchids making their re-appearance.

Despite those heroic efforts, it turned out there was yet more Balsam to bash. And so it was that the legions were summoned, with their wellies attached, to make further inroads today. There were seven of us, and were pleased we cleared all we found in the limited patch we covered – but we know plenty more is lurking elsewhere, and will have to be dealt with later.

At the start, Team Leader Margaret spotted a target and plunged into the reeds, from where she directed us to where we were really meant to be.

Here’s what we were looking for: although it can look similar to other plants growing with it, once you get your eye in it’s easy to spot which needs removing.

Even so, it’s depressing to think you have cleared a patch, only to turn round and spot more that you have missed. They seem to gather particularly closely under trees:

Some are still tiny, but the idea is to get them out too. Some however are already quite tall: here’s your correspondent with the biggest of the day. (The fact that the said correspondent is never described as tall should be ignored for the purposes of this boast.)

Although the balsam is generally not as tall as that yet, the reeds certainly are, and it’s easy to lose sight of your fellow balsam bashers. Perhaps we should be roped together, like mountaineers.

Sharp-eyed Team Leader Julie spotted this splendid Drinker moth caterpillar, sadly not doing something helpful like eating any balsam:

There’s no traditional tea break image today - because we didn’t have one - but the session was only for an hour, which is about as much as our creaking backs can stand. At the end of it all, the ritual tipping out of the sacks was carried out, accompanied by restrained whoops of delight in place of a fanfare.

Here is Team Leader Margaret’s message of thanks:

A huge thank you to the seven who came  on what turned out to be a lovely sunny morning. The job you did today was so important as it has reduced the chance of the dread Balsam escaping further into the SSSI. Despite the back bending work there was as always great atmosphere. We intend to run another session next Sunday this time fording the stream. So if you are up for extreme sports do join us.

Thank you all again.

Margaret for the team leaders.

It's Balsam time again!

 

Well, it’s been a while, and the Common has taken the chance to exploit the plentiful rain and intermittent warmth to put on a growing spurt. That’s the trigger for Team Leader Margaret to attempt to recruit volunteers to pull out the ever-invasive Himalayan Balsam before it gets a foothold, let alone a stranglehold. Those without a signed excuse letter, or who Margaret has some dirt on perhaps, turned up for an hour’s fun in the sun this morning. Your usual correspondent being one of the absentees (you decide which category I fall into), we’re grateful to Team Leader Julie for the following account.

My goodness how the reed has grown since we cut it in February/March!!

Lurking in there was (and still is!) lots of Himalayan Balsam. Five volunteers turned out in the glorious sunshine to gently pull it out of the ground. Noel apparently came for a break as he’d been in his garden since 6.30am! Not much of a break! Wellies were a good choice as it was a little damp underfoot…

There were also lots of holes and dips to slide into and there were a few near misses for face planting into the mud!  Luckily we all remained upright.

At first you don’t spot the balsam easily and then you get your eye in…though being poked in the eye with reed was a hazard…but..found you…

Then you realise they are everywhere…everyone was soon stuffing their bags with the pesky invader.

We called it a day after an hour (it is enough!) with eight sacks full of balsam.

Margaret, of course, spotted a couple by the car park and risked a head first dive into the beck to get them at the end!

Tipped out on the heap to be covered in black plastic so it rots down - it was quite a heap…

A good start made - we return next Sunday in a race to grab the balsam while the reed is short…I’m sure it grew a few inches while we were there!

Here is Team Leader Margaret's message of thanks:

Hello all.

There were just the five of us but thanks are due nonetheless. It was certainly easier to find and pull with the new reed. As the reed is growing so fast we are going to have another  working party next week too. Hope to see some of you then.

Thanks again to the five, you know who you are.

Margaret (for the team leaders).

Since our last posting, spring has come and now almost passed, and the annual round of sightings of plants and animals has kicked off in earnest, with almost 100 noted on the whiteboard in under three months. Apart from the usual dinosaurs, visible only to small children, notable sightings include sparrowhawk, siskin, Moschatel (Town Hall Clock), lesser redpoll, snipe, treecreeper, common lizard, lesser whitethroat, cotton grass and bogbean. Particularly pleasing is the manically singing sedge warbler that I haven’t heard here for several years, and a willow warbler was singing, sadly not on the Common, but not too far away. To me, that’s the sound of summer, and I miss it dearly from our little patch.

That’ll do for now

Now that the birds appear to have got the idea that Spring is upon us, and have started yelling about it, telling one bird song apart from another can be a bit daunting. Never fear, technology’s here! For several years I have had the Chirpomatic app on my phone, and it can be quite helpful. Not only does it provide examples of the songs of most if not all of the birds found in Britain, but crucially it allows you to record a singing bird and then it suggests what that songster might be. So far, so good, but it’s not the only kid in town.

America’s Cornell Laboratory has produced Merlin: bird ID help for 10,000 species. I have also had this free app on my phone for some time, but really only used it to help identify birds seen: it guides you through the process, narrowing down the field from presumably 10,000 possibilities to (hopefully) the right one, using criteria such as size, colour, location, etc. But it’s also really powerful at identifying birds by sound, and a walk round the very wet NWT Hickling reserve the other day with someone continually using the app impressed me greatly. So much so in fact that I put it through its paces on our own dear reserve the very next day. What I like about this one is that it copes well with several birds all making a noise together, displaying each one on the screen as it makes an identification. Here’s a screenshot of a recording I made of blue tit, robin, wren and goldcrest in the Alder Carr where the boardwalk crosses Fox’s Beck.

That trip to Hickling was just about rain-free, but the reserve and the surrounding area was evidence of how much rain had fallen recently. On my way home I stopped in a lay-by opposite a flooded field, enjoying this flock of swans: a few mutes, but wonderfully, most of them were whoopers, and no doubt soon to leave us for their summer breeding grounds.

It turns out that our mini working party on Saturday 10^th was the final act of the cutting season. NWT warden George has declared the job finished, and expressed his gratitude for our efforts. So we’re off the hook until sometime in March, when attention will shift briefly to Pit Common.

Here’s a short account of how that final hour-long session unfolded:

Eleven of us turned up at the appointed hour, facing as we knew we would, a supremely soggy fen. Three heavily loaded drag sheets had been left from the previous Sunday’s session, and these needed shifting. Would the winch be up to the task? Well, as it turned out, yes, of course it was – thanks goodness.

Here to demonstrate how boggy it was, and also how important one’s choice of headgear is, are two of our stalwarts.

Always hogging the camera, one of the said stalwarts then popped up at the winch site, with another stalwart. You’ll notice they’re pointing in different directions…

Once the three sheets to the wind had been moved and tipped out, we were presented with an almighty great heap of dumped material. So that it isn’t encroaching too much onto the open area, just for the fun of it we decided to pitchfork the front of it over the top to the back of the pile. Here we see just how much fun it was.

Meanwhile, another, less mud-loving team was busy at the car park, knocking back the scrub that had been gradually encroaching. Part of it was temporarily taped off for safety reasons

Brian was reunited with his beloved brush cutter.

Team work makes the dream work!

Here’s the end result …

Another dead hedge!!

We wanted to get some space back, but you must be careful what you wish for!

Here’s the Team Leaders’ message of thanks:

Hello all

When we sent out the schedule of work parties, we had two more scheduled - this Sunday and then two weeks after that, but in truth we have completed everything that NWT want from us for this season! We are just too efficient!

Our NWT warden, George, visited the commons this week and declared us as done for the reed cutting.  There will be a small work party in March to do a Conservation Cut at the Pit and then (for those who are into it) Himalayan Balsam pulling around May time. We will put out emails when these are scheduled in. The main fen/reed cutting will start again in August.

Until then, can we take this opportunity to thank you all very much for all your hard work and support again over the last year.  We have a fantastic team of volunteers at Southrepps - long may it continue. We hope to see you all again soon.

Take care,

Regards, Julie, Margaret, Kevin, John and Sue

 

Spring in the air

Spring in the air? Most of us are knocking on a bit (indeed, there’s a fair sprinkling of septuagenarians in our doughty group), so any suggestion of springing is rather out of the question. As for the season however, the unfashionably early spring weather is certainly leading a lot of plants and birds to wake up. The snowdrops are looking great, and justifying the earlier work to keep this section on the edge of Bradfield Road clear in readiness for their display.

I have recently listened to a lovely podcast on BBC Sounds, about a visit to the reed cutters on Cley Marshes. The Bishop family have been cutting reeds there every winter for several generations, with very little change to the tools and methods used. As well as hearing about the current line-up, there was also a short section focussing on the management of the NWT reserve; which of course shares our warden George with us. The item is called Reed cutting at Cley, and it’s in the Open Country podcast. Since we share a passion for cutting reeds, it’s well worth a listen.

Speaking of weather, there had been a good dry spell, including the couple of days after the pre-cut of reeds ready for our attention today. Unkindly, it rained the evening before our work session, meaning that the piles of cut reed we were presented with were soggy again – just like last time. In fact, it was surprising just how much boggier the whole area had become in the last fortnight.

As soon as the drag sheets are laid out the happy throng of volunteers (20 again this time) set to with a will and a pitchfork; here they go.

But before the loaded sheets can be moved, the vital winch crew must get the blessed machine in place and running; that’s what these three are up to.

Regular (or even irregular) readers of these posts will be only too aware of the tendency of those at the winching end of the operation to burst into song, usually led by the redoubtable Noel. Today was exceptional, in that a quartet of rich male voices formed, including your own, your very own, correspondent. For reasons already unclear, our concert began with Waterloo Sunset, originally by the Kinks: a little later a rousing rendition of L-O-L-A Lola rounded off the performance. A stray remark of how summery the temperature felt led us nicely into the hits of The Small Faces and Mungo Jerry. We then, for no apparent reason, meandered into a bit of Oliver! The Musical, with the risk, thankfully averted, of a longer diversion into Songs from the Shows. The rest of the work party, safely out of earshot, don’t know what they missed!

Summer it might not yet be, but it was definitely milder than last time, and within 15 minutes the layers were coming off. Thank you Nature for providing a coat stand, albeit one reminiscent to at least one of us as a gamekeeper’s gibbet, looking as it did like a lot of strung-up crows. These of course were intended to warn “vermin” about their fate if the keeper saw them: in this case it could perhaps serve as a warning to unwary folk inclined to join us in our muddy cavorting.

Team Leader Julie was busy raking up as much as possible of the wet material left behind last time.

A useful incidental task in this area is to keep the watercourses heading towards the Beck clear.

 The half-time break arrived to general relief.

It was a relief tempered somewhat by the loss of the majority of the biscuits in the muddy morass. In Sheila’s absence, we blamed it on the Catering B team! But it didn’t entirely inhibit those for whom Custard Creams are so desirable; they’re alright if they don’t get too soggy

Then the fear was that a pile of uneaten biscuits beside the boardwalk would not be considered inedible by passing dogs, with the risk of enraging their owners, so it was decided to submerge them. (I don’t think it will present much of a challenge to Basil and his ilk though.)

The old yellow drag sheets were brought out of hibernation for some of the older, wet and heavy material to be piled onto, so that they could then be laboriously dragged to the main sheets for winching the considerable distance to the dumping site.

At first I thought some giant amphibious moles had been at work, but their molehills turned out to be piles of almost immovable vegetation.

Almost immovable, but not quite. Not for the first time, thank goodness for that winch!

While all this forking and winching was going on, Brian was busy with the brush cutter clearing dead stuff away near the car park.

He was later joined by others to help keep the Beck clear.

By the end of the session there were still three fully loaded sheets to winch away. This will be done by a small team next Saturday, all being well.

Otherwise, Area F is cleared and our reed clearance duties completed for this season.

What a view from the car park now!! 

Here is Team Leader Margaret’s message of thanks:

Hello all you wonderful people.

Another amazing morning's work. We have now completed the cutting programme for this season. Thanks to the conditions underfoot it was another morning of hard graft and we are extremely grateful for your efforts. We hope it gives you pleasure as you stroll along the boardwalk. We still have three sheets to pull, those of you who said that they would be willing to help with this task, we shall meet at the container at 10.00 next Saturday. JH suggests it takes 10-15 minutes per pull; so it should only take an hour. If it is pouring with rain we will cancel.

We will contact George Baldock our warden and see if there are any other tasks he wants doing, and let you know in good time if we will be holding a working party in two weeks’ time.

Many thanks again.

Margaret (for the team leaders)