A walk to the heronry in Macclesfield Forest, Monday 26 May 2014

Today five of us met at the Leather's Smithy, Langley at 3:30pm and went for a short walk via Ridgegate Reservoir to the herony viewpoint on Trentabank Reservoir.  There we met Sarah Bujac, her newborn daughter Isla and Sarah's mum and dad.  We all spent twenty minutes bird watching and saw several herons, five heron nests and a dozen cormorants nesting in trees on the far bank.  We shared between us the binoculars and monocular that we'd brought.  Presumably the herons in the nests were unfledged chicks whose parents were out hunting.  From time to time there was commotion from the heronry but generally it was very quiet.

Grey heron (but not one we saw!)

During the walk we also saw two mandarin ducks (confirmed by Megan via Google Images on 4G), one grebe, a buzzard, other unidentified ducks and a shoal of small fish.  We walked back to the Leather's Smithy for 5:30pm and had a meal and drinks lasting two hours.  Five of us had the Wild Boar Burger as recommended by Kate, and agreed it was a very good choice!

Thanks to Kate for leading the walk and to Sue for booking the table.

Birch Bash at Formby on 18 May 2014

Nine volunteers turned out to Formby on a warm sunny day.

We shared cars from Styal - three sat navs took 3 different routes :- one did not know the destination, one took a very strange route in Formby, and the other confused its driver on the motorway resulting in a scenic route) - but we traditionally take different routes every time we go to Fomby!

The beach was busy and a high tide was expected and the original (planned) work (fencing the dunes) would have got in the way of the public - so a back up task was found....

before

during / after

We spent the day clearing young birch from a small plantation of pine that had become overgrown.

A black birds nest restricted the area we could work on.  We stopped a little early and returned to the cars via the ice cream van and the beach.

Hedge trimming at Hayfield on 11 May 2014

Another good turnout (especially so because of the wet weather forecast) saw ten of us working with rangers Shane and Mark at Ashes Farm.  Two of the ten were first timers which continues the encouraging trend of the last few weeks.

The job for the day was to trim both sides of a ~150m long hawthorn/blackthorn hedge in such a way that both sides sloped upwards from a wide base to a narrower top.  In that way the sides of the hedge get more sunlight and grow better than if they are vertical.  We piled the cuttings up at either end of the hedge or dropped them into the hedge to compost.  Next week ranger Myles will trim the top of the hedge using the portable power trimmer.

Thankfully the weather was better than forecast and the torrential rain all fell when we were mustering in the car park at the start and at the farm before we walked to the worksite.  The rain that fell as we worked soon blew through and, besides, most of our work was on the upwind side of the hedge which was an effective windbreak/shelter.  Nonetheless we didn't linger long at the coffee and lunch breaks (other than to eat chocolate cake and throw sticks for Rhona (Shane's springer spaniel) to chase) and had finished the work by 3pm (in plenty of time to get home to see Man City become Premier League Champions!).

28th AGM on Tuesday 6th May 2014

We held our AGM tonight in the meeting room at Norcliffe Chapel, Styal.  Ten members attended plus Shane Bates (High Peak ranger).

The AGM covered the usual matters:
Apologies for absence
Approval of minutes of 2013 AGM
Chairman's Report (Daniel Black)
Treasurer's Report (Denise Clark)
Election of committee for 2014/15 (Adrian, Ally, Daniel, Denise, Matt, Sue)
AOB

Daniel covered the following topics in his Chairman's Report: membership, publicity, work hours, work days, work tasks and socials, and finished by thanking all the people who have made the year another successful one for the group.

Ten members earned long service awards during the year:
20 years  Anne Yates
15 years  Sue Bonner
10 years  Daniel Black, Tim O'Donnell
5 years    Matt Smethurst, Mick Sykes, Pip Fisher, Philippa Greaves, Karin Frood

Matt, Tim, Daniel and Sue were present at the meeting to receive their awards in person from Shane.

After refreshments Shane gave us an interesting talk about the work the NT has been doing on Kinder Scout over the last five years to stabilise the peat bogs on the plateau.  Plants are now growing there that have not been recorded for 200 years!