They came, they sawed, they conquered

 

It was another lovely day, showing real promise that Spring is under way. Amongst the growing birdsong, I heard the “chirp, chirp, cheep” of my first reed bunting of the year. Let’s hope it’s a portent of a productive breeding season for our red-bed denizens!

The reed cutting having been completed last time, this session’s task at hand was scrub bashing, and 17 scrub bashers certainly bashed some scrub. This was alongside the boardwalk between the car park and the storage container, following on from earlier bashing further along. It’s necessary because the willow trees love to extend their branches across the boardwalk, to the annoyance and inconvenience of visitors to the Common.

Unusually, the tools were laid out neatly at the start of the session, ready for the eager volunteers to pounce upon.

The Team Leaders were putting new blades in the bow saws (and what a difference it made)…and no cut fingers reported!

Those saws were of course put to good effect in the hands of crack sawyers.

And the loppers were put to even better use in the hands of, er, lopperers.

Cut branches were hauled away by hauliers

And brushers brushed the boardwalk clean

The usual coffee break gave everyone a chance to debate the issues of the day

…..then it was back to work. Four ladies set to building a dead hedge with the brash and branches removed….they were so proud (rightly so) of their work…

… here’s Team Leader Julie, the doyenne of dead-hedge creators, weaving her craft.

The boardwalk edges are now cut right back which will hopefully mean we can keep it clear to walk along.

A nice bracket fungus

The work almost done, there was light at the end of the tunnel

A session before Christmas worked on the section beside the boardwalk spur linking the main bit with Bradfield Road. These glorious Snowdrops give splendid justification for all that effort. 

Here’s Julie’s message of thanks:

Hello all

This is just our customary 'Thank you' to the fantastic team of volunteers who turned out for today's Work Party.  Seventeen of us turned out in the glorious sunshine to wield loppers, saws (with new blades!) and brooms.  It was a very enjoyable morning with everyone in good form. Congratulations to the team of ladies who discovered their talent for dead hedging - so satisfying to see it at the end.

We will be returning to tackle scrub on Area B in two weeks’ time and hope for the same lovely weather! Enjoy the sunshine while it lasts!

Take Care

Julie and the TLs  

(Reed) bed made

 

I was given two wonderful books for Christmas, written 80 years apart, but they could have both been written now. Aldo Leopold’s Sand County Almanack’ was written in the 1940s, by a man often described as a father of environmentalism. Distressed by the degradation of much North American land he bought an exhausted farm and helped it to regenerate naturally. Way back then he was warning about the perils of over-grazing, invasive non-native species, inappropriate development in wild areas, eradication of apex predators, and especially the reckless disregard for the health of the soil. Isabella Tree’s Wilding addresses the same themes that are even more extreme now. She describes returning to a more natural state the now-famous Knepp Estate in Sussex which her husband had inherited as a traditional farm, but that was no longer capable of paying its way. They realised that what was missing was the input of Mother Nature, and as we were always told, Mother knows best. So areas of the estate have been left to their own devices, with astonishing improvements in biodiversity, and the profitability of the estate. If only more landowners would take heed!

Although it’s still only early February, there are encouraging signs that Spring is on its way. It’s too early for Ted Hughes’s increasingly unreliable measure that “the globe is still working” (the arrival of the swifts), but the birds in School Common are starting to sing, the Hazel catkins are out, the puppy-yapping geese are drifting back to Iceland, and yesterday I heard a skylark, larking about in the sky. You can almost hear the reeds re-growing, ready for our attention next winter!

Your two usual correspondents having more pressing commitments keeping us away from Sunday’s working party, this time we’re relying on hard-pressed Team Leaders Margaret and Kevin for the words and pictures from the last session of the season on the main reedbed:

After a dull Saturday, the sun shone on the righteous and it was another crisp bright morning to make the heavy work a less daunting prospect. The walk to the work site was long; the furthest distance from the Lower Street end of the boardwalk that we have go.

The ground at the area being cut was very wet and unstable underfoot.

Although a number of regulars were unable to attend, a very creditable 17 brave souls turned out, and we were quickly winching away.

A lot of reed had been cut a few days previously, but so good was our progress that Grillo was called for, and the remaining area cut. After a quick move of winching site during the coffee break we were away again.

We all know that trees are essential – including as coat stands.

Only three people failed to stay upright: John and Noel rolled over with the sheet, and Margaret failed to spot a log.

After coffee the newly cut reed was very dry and light, so a joy to move, and the job was quickly completed.

Ever the showman, Noel is here seen showing off his disco moves:

Leo reprised his role as tree stump extractor, regardless of the wet patch he was getting on his knee:

Here’s how the site looked at the end of the session, and the reed cutting part of our work for the season - back to scrub bashing in two weeks.

Here's Team Leader Kevin’s message of thanks:

Hello all

Now that you think it’s over for another season you will be delighted to hear that we have decided to hold another working party in a fortnight’s time to tackle the trees and shrubs between the car park and the container.

The seventeen volunteers who came out today on a lovely sunny morning did a super job in clearing the reed that was already cut, so much so that we had to bring Grillo out to cut the remaining area. This means that we have finished the reed cutting programme for this year.

Our thanks to everyone who turned out today - you did a fantastic job. Should you not be able to come in two weeks’ time, we the team leaders on behalf of NWT, would like to say a big thank you for all your work during the year.

We hope those of you who are unwell make a speedy recovery and we look forward to seeing you soon.

Thanks

Kevin and the TLs

 

 

Cold but beautiful

The last blog posting mentioned the marvellous number of sightings of many different species that have been added to the whiteboard at the information point at the Lower Street end of the main boardwalk. This is an example of the valuable contribution we ordinary people are making to scientific data gathering; what has become called Citizen Science. One of the biggest Citizen Science projects is of course the RSPB’s Big Garden Birdwatch, and this year’s one takes place next weekend. Anyone can take part; you don’t need a big garden as that’s not what ‘Big Garden’ refers to. You don’t even need a garden; a window box or a park will do just as well. As usual, I will be doing it for the required hour some time during 27^th to 29^th January. Full details are at The RSPB Wildlife Charity: Nature Reserves & Wildlife Conservation

It might have been bloomin’ cold this morning, but it was also very beautiful, and 16 frost-hardy volunteers turned out to make the most of it. Here are two trudging through the frozen reeds to join the other early starters.

The frost was making everything atmospheric.

 

On the subject of benches, sharp-eyed regular visitors to the Common will have noticed that the one on the Warren Road side of the Beck has had to be removed, as it had rotted and become unsafe.

Problems started early on when we struggled to get the sheets out of the container, as they were frozen together! The winch rope was also frozen and took a lot of unravelling! But how beautiful did the common look.

This was at the start, trying to open the frozen sheets 

Team Leaders represent the pinnacle of technical ability - they’ve progressed to wielding rakes.

Line dancing on the Common looks a bit different 

Coffee break was delivered to the working area and served from the floor - that’s dedication!

Regular readers of this blog will be painfully aware of our tendency to invent terminology. Today it was again centred on the dumping process. With a lot of trees to fit dumped vegetation between, we need to use every possible bit of a painstakingly cleared area, and this involves a lot more manual tipping off the sheets than otherwise. Noel (or was it Brian?) directed us to the “pocket” we needed to drop the drag sheet into – much like snooker, or in view of the level of difficulty, billiards. Here is a sheet being potted. 

This was tiring work: the reed stems, which had been cut a few days before, were frozen to the ground, and to each other, meaning that considerable effort was required to shift them. No wonder Bob fancied a little lie down!

Team work makes the dream work.

Here’s the expansive view from the boardwalk at the end of the session. One more session in a fortnight’s time should see the job done.

Here's Team Leader Margaret’s message of thanks:

Just a quick thank you for turning out this morning. It was a very cold start. I have been doing this for 20 years and never have the sheets and rope been frozen solid. So you all coped admirably with the extreme conditions.

I hope you all found it enjoyable and are pleased with the results. We certainly are. Hopefully one last go in two weeks will see the end of the reed bed for this year and we look forward to seeing you all then.

best wishes

Margaret and the team leaders.

And finally, anyone going down Pit Street will have noticed that the Pit is back to looking nice now, with a lot more water in it than for the last few months. 

 

Mud, mud, glorious mud!

The year has got off to a very melancholy start for the volunteers who know Les and Margaret McCormick, who have worked alongside us on the Common for many years. Sadly, Les died on 2nd January, having continued to live his life to the full throughout his long illness. They continued to volunteer whenever his health allowed - the last time being exactly a year ago, on the first working party of 2022. As always, Les was cheerful and threw himself into the work. We will miss him greatly, and send our condolences to Margaret and the family.

 

Some statistics from 2022:

The sightings whiteboard was well used again during 2022: 297 records were passed on to NWT (excluding the un-verified dinosaur, bear and reindeer ones), with 127 different species reported. (Amazingly, 297 is also the number of records sent to NWT in 2020.)

During 2022 35 of us contributed a collective 683 hours of volunteering effort on behalf of Norfolk Wildlife Trust! As well as many other small bits of work, there were 16 full working parties, with a splendid average attendance of 15.6. Most of the work is inevitably focused on the main common as it is a SSSI, and that accounted for 496 of those hours. Pit and School Commons, repairs to the boardwalk and machinery, and removing Himalayan Balsam were other major areas of our activity, but not forgetting the 30 hours clocked up on vital botanical surveys. Well done us!

 

There might be nothing like glorious mud for cooling the blood, but it does a pretty good job of freezing the feet too, and there was plenty of squidgy wet mud to do that today on the main reedbed, to which we had returned after a festive break of four weeks.

We were lucky however with the weather; following Saturday evening’s storm, the morning was bright, with only light airs, and with the inevitable physical exercise, we soon warmed up. We were lucky too, in that only a couple of hours after we packed up, what I am reliably informed Norfolk seafarers call a tempest blew up, with thunder, lightning (very very frightening) and hail.

As usual, a couple of days earlier there had been a session to provide today’s eager volunteers with plenty of cut material to work with at the start of the main session.

Although the six pre-cutters had already used it, today was the first time most of us had seen the temporary replacement for the ailing Grizzly mower. Called from the substitutes’ bench was Grillo, of Italian extraction. It was quickly named The Italian Job: Michael Caine impersonators saying “Don’t blow the bloody wheels off!” became irritating. Here is mower wrangler Kevin with Grillo.

These few images give an impression of the generally pleasant conditions (if you ignore the mud)

At the break we were cheered to see that Grillo’s manual had been discovered; better late than not at all. A diagram indicated where to insert oil – we assumed olive oil given its place of manufacture. Here we see John perusing the document. 

We had returned to the main reedbed braced for the wet conditions, following several hefty downpours. Our most recent recruit Jenny wore her mud with pride; she thought she’d never been muddier. It was good that Team Leader Margaret at last found out why she doesn’t answer to the name of Claire. This gives an idea of the soggy state of the ground.

Here’s the winch team examining recently delivered reeds in great detail. There should be four of them, but …

Winching the heavily loaded drag sheets between gaps in the trees at the edge of the area required all our impressive steering skills. Rather than weaving around rotting tree stumps, Leo (who brings our average age into tolerable levels) was tasked with extracting them. That got him muddy, and tired. Here he is applying himself to the task, and triumphantly displaying one of his victims.

Winching the sheets between two trees was like threading them through the eye of a needle. It was declared a pinch point, which until then was what I thought burglars called a house they planned to rob. Once through the needle’s eye, as ever the reeds needed tipping off the sheet and out of bed. Sometimes the classic method of using the winch to achieve it was possible, but in such a constrained spot it was sometimes necessary to tip it out manually. We call this the “Dung Beetle Roll”, although some people quite unreasonably objected to being compared to those useful insects. This then set some hares running about the music of Jelly Roll Morton and the Chilli Peppers: you see how easily we can get distracted!

Half-way through the session, the half-time break arrived, complete with warm beverages and chocolate biscuits. The pitchforks are not invited; they just stand around wearing gloves for hats, waiting patiently for the revellers’ return

Here’s how the area looked at the end of the session; one, or at most two more will see the job done, and the great view along the boardwalk and beyond opened up – for a few months anyway.

Here’s Team Leader Margaret’s message of thanks:

A very happy New year to you all.

Thank you to the 17 folk who turned up this morning to continue work on the reed bed. With luck we may be able to finish the whole thing in two weeks’ time. Special mention to the chaps who spent a couple of hours this week getting to grips with our on-loan machine whilst Grizzly is being repaired.

I also have the sad task of letting you all know that Les, a long-time volunteer died on the 2nd of January. His humour, gentleness and kindness not to mention his hard work will be much missed. We send all our love and best wishes to you Maggie.

Take care all of you and see you on the 22nd

Margaret and the team leaders.