Tag Archives: Volunteers

Natural History

Quick! Get out to Aston Rowant before Lockdown!

Volunteers (not me this time) cutting and burning scrub that was invading the Chalk Grassland at Aston Rowant. They made a lovely snipping and clipping noise, very gentle, with a background crackle of burning, as the smell of woodsmoke floated across the reserve.

Ravens, several in aerobatic pairs, wheeled overhead, as did a Buzzard and quite a few Red Kites.

The Witches Broom Hornbeam tree – the brooms are not Mistletoe but shock growths of the tree itself, caused by a bacterium, fungus, or virus
Bryony Fruits and handsomely spiralling stems of this climbing plant
Chalk Grassland is perfect for a picnic – smooth and dry to sit on, and there’s usually a lovely view. Ideally comfortable – unless you sit on a low-growing Sit-Upon Thistle!

A Bullfinch wheezed its odd “Deu” call from a hawthorn bush as we had our picnic.

The local Sheep have made a comfortable hollow to keep out of the wind while they’re lying down to digest a bellyful of grass (and why shouldn’t they, it must be tough). The result is a neat geological section through the thin soil, called a Rendzina, down to the solid white Chalk only a few inches beneath the turf. The topmost layer of soil is relatively rich in humus (organic matter); then it turns into a mixture of eroded chalk bits and poorer soil; and then it’s Chalk. The soil successively deepens as it goes down the valley, becoming a richer Brown Earth at the bottom; the chain of soils from thinnest, driest Rendzina at the top to thickest, moistest Brown Earth at the bottom is called a Catena (Latin for chain).
Sulphur Tuft in attractive “troops” all over and around a mossy tree-trunk, which it is helping to decompose
The “Egg” of the Stinkhorn fungus, which rejoices under the name Phallus impudicus (“The Rude Phallus”) – the gelatinous “Egg” turns into a long roughly cylindrical, er, stalk, with a brown, wrinkled, stinking, bell-shaped, er, top which crumbles into masses of spores; flies, attracted by the stink, come and disperse the spores. As they say, there are lots of ways to make a living …

Conservation, Nature Reserves

Keeping Chiswick’s Wet Woodland Wet

Sedge removed (a tuft still visible bottom right), much mud still to scoop out …

Well, it’s late November, the animals aren’t breeding, and the flowers are mostly not flowering (Rowan and Cotoneaster are honourable exceptions). So, it’s the perfect time for clearing out the Wet Woodland (Carr) to keep it looking, well, Wet, rather than getting more and more overgrown and full of leaf litter until it turns into good old ordinary dry woodland, or Mixed Temperate Forest as an ecologist would say.

Mudscooping the Wet Woodland (aka the “Mangrove Swamp”)

There’s always a debate about why we do this sort of thing. Shouldn’t we just do George Monbiot’s Rewilding thing and leave nature alone? Well, we could. Then the reserve’s pond, wet woodland, meadows, grassy banks, and demonstration flowerbed would all go through the succession to mixed woodland, and we’d have an end-to-end canopy of trees: not a bad thing you might say.

But we would lose much of the diversity of habitats and of species – no pond life, no grassland flowers or grassland butterflies, for instance. In a large enough area, that would be fine: the rivers would flood and meander, create new oxbow lakes, mudflats, and shingle banks, which would be colonized and grow up into varied ponds, wet woodland, meadows, and forest, just as you’d hope.

Muddy but Happy!

Only one small problem: you need to include a river’s catchment area and flood plain in the reserve. That’d be the whole of Oxfordshire, Berkshire, and London, roughly…

So, to be practical, in an urban nature reserve you only get a small area to conserve, to allow people to visit to see and feel and smell and touch nature, and to teach children (and adults) about nature. Those are worthy aims, and they’re the raison d’etre of London Wildlife Trust. To manage that, one needs to maintain a bit of diversity of habitats and of species for people to see and learn about. And that means holding back the natural succession so that not every inch is a tree canopy, splendid as canopies are. And that means having volunteers scoop mud, mow grass, and pull out tree seedlings, all the while trying to leave enough seeds, eggs and other life-forms in place for the reserve to burst back into life at all stages of the succession.

Yes, we know George Monbiot calls all that “gardening”: but really, it’s not. We’re just creating the conditions for nature to do its own thing, or rather, a lot of its different and wonderful things.

Chaotic patterns of wet mud running into erosion gullies down the flat face of a wheelbarrow. The pattern forms within a minute of tipping mud from the barrow: different every time, but always giving the same wonderfully beautiful natural result.

Actually, one can hardly help letting nature do its thing. It does it even in the mud in a wheelbarrow!

Natural History

Willow Emerald, Woodmouse, Volunteers in Gunnersbury Triangle

Willow Emerald Damselfly on Willow in GT. This is a new species in the UK, only having arrived from the Continent in the past couple of years. It appeared in numbers ovipositing in the GT pond in August. The species perches with its wings not fully closed together. The iridescent green is handsome when it flies, remarkably well camouflaged when perched.

Woodmouse by GT bicycle wheel

Female Southern Hawker on Broom

Tara Netty Eleni volunteers mowing Anthill Meadow (and looking at interesting specimens). We found small toads, frogs, and newts in the grass.

Conservation, Nature Reserves

Debrambling and Distributor Heads all in a Day’s Work

Volunteers debrambling the Acid Grassland

Four Volunteers

Quite a haul of rubbish by the fence (and yes, that’s a distributor cap)

Distributor bits, wing mirror, electrical leads, yes, there used to be a garage over the fence. What with old rusty pipes, cigarette lighters, glass milk bottles (remember them?)  and remains of workers’ lunches, it was quite a haul. We dug out some champion brambles and quite a few enormous nettles, too.

I also found some bits of Asbestos roofing, but we left them in situ as there was a Smooth Newt sheltering beneath them. All in all, it’s amazing what people will sling over a fence. We were happy to leave the North bank in a better state than it’s been in for many years.