Hayfield - 30th June 2013

After a cold and damp week, the weather forecast promised a nice dry day at Hayfield on Sunday. Phone calls and emails from willing volunteers came in right up to the last minute and by Sunday morning we had a baker's dozen assembled at Sett Valley car park ready to take on the bracken on the western slopes of Kinder Reservoir. The Trust are trying to regenerate an area of mixed woodland above the start of the bridleway that leads you towards William Clough and Kinder Scout. Our task was to clear the bracken from around young saplings to allow light to them and stop them from being suffocated.

The large group made light work of the hillside and by late morning we had completed the task!  Not to be defeated, Myles (the ranger) had other tasks up his sleeves: he set us about sweeping the hillside for spare tree guards (imagine a disorganised police line searching the hillside for evidence and you'll get the gist); got us to erect two new Bridleway sign posts and sent us into the more established woodland to do some further bracken control.

 

Apart from nearly loosing a fleece and a small dog amid the bracken, we had a very successful and enjoyable day. I just hope my loud sneezing (hayfever), the tiny insect bites and sunburn (I saw a few red faces!) haven't put anyone off returning to this beautiful worksite for another bash later in July!

Sarah 

Note from Sue: many thanks Sarah for swapping and leading this workday for me - it sounds like you had a great day!

Crassula helmsii take 2 - Dunham Massey 23 June 2013

We had a gap in the program labeled "to be confirmed".....

At fairly short notice this became a trip back to Dunham Massey to get on with the attempt to kill the Crassula helmsii in one pond by excluding light with black plastic.

The first task turned out to be helping to take down two "marquees" in the garden which had been used for a wedding and other events - as they are not designed to stand in high winds.  We then moved onto the pond.

The roll of plastic still looked quite large - but in actual fact it is a large pond with a lot of Crassula....

Our four volunteers donned waders, and used all the plastic that was left from last time to cover a section of floating Crassula mat that was showing beyond the first sheet that was put in place during our last trip to Dunham Massey.  Without more sheeting it did not make sense to disturb the rest of the crassula - so we packed up and went back to the carpark.

Before leaving we had a short session check the land between the carpark and the wall for Himalayan Balsam - this used to be a major problem and we have done many work days in this area.  The original strategy was to pull the plants but wasn't working then many of the smaller trees were removed which allowed machines to be used to eliminate the balsam problem.  This second strategy has succeeded as we found very few plants - which were easily dealt with.

I assume one day we will be back in the pond with even more plastic as so far we have only covered a small fraction of the invasive water plant, and it needs to be left in the dark for between 6 months and a year.

Formby 16th June 2013

Four of us travelled to Formby on a slightly cloudy day and met with Kate the Ranger and Robbie, another volunteer, at the Countryside Office to get the details of our task for the day. We had a choice of 'planting' dead Christmas trees at the side of the dunes to help prevent sand erosion or Balsam bashing. We opted to start with the former and see how we'd got on by lunchtime as to whether we'd Balsam bash in the afternoon.

While driving to the NT car park, Sue mentioned that she'd love to see a red squirrel during the day to which Adrian replied "I've just seen one running along that garden fence!". Sue was gutted that she'd not seen it.

Once we got to the dunes, we started planting the dead Christmas trees. It was glorious sunshine and we found it much easier than expected and very satisfying.

At lunchtime, we went down onto the beach and ate our sandwiches there - it was lovely to be able to enjoy the seaside on such a nice day. After lunch we resumed the tree planting and, as we were at the side of the walkway to the beach, lots of visitors came over to chat to us and find out who we were and what we were doing.

By the end of the afternoon, we'd made a big difference and had planted tree's at the end of paths that had formed from the dunes, where the sand was being away, as a line by the side of the fence.

Kate, the Ranger, told us that the dunes are moving about 4 metres a year and, although they do not want to stop the sand going into the sea and travelling up the coast, they do want to prevent the sand being blown off the dunes and into the car park and onto the path to the beach, as the dunes are part of Formby's natural sea defences and are needed there.

 

We had such a good day, getting a tan as well as enjoying the work and, when we stopped near the kiosk on the way out, Sue saw a red squirrel in a tree:-)  The day couldn't have been any more perfect!

 

 

Dunham Massey 9 June 2013

A wet, muddy, but pleasantly sunny and hot day was spent by seven Manchester volunteers, plus three from the Merseyside group. We were in the lowest of the ponds in the park to prepare it for an experimental attempt to control an invasive pond weed - Crassula helmsii. This semi-aquatic plant can (and does) grow to cover ponds and starve other waterlife of oxygen. You can find more information about it here: http://cabiinvasives.wordpress.com/2013/05/17/getting-swamped-australian-swamp-stonecrop-crassula-helmsii-in-the-uk/

In the pond at Dunham, the rangers wanted to try covering the the crassula with plastic sheeting in the same way you might kill off weeds in your garden. In order to do this as effectively as possible, we were there to remove the iris growing through the crassula so the polythene sheets could be flat on the surface to cut out the light. The iris will happily grow back again - we are usually removing excess from the ponds at Dunham once a year anyway.

Supervised by ranger John Mann, most of the group were in the pond in waders, pulling up the iris, with a couple on the bank dragging and piling it up. It was going to stay there to drain for a day or so.

This will allow the various wee beasties in the iris to escape back to the pond before it is taken away for burning. At the end of the day we laid the polythene, dug it into the bank and weighted it with logs from the pond. It will be interesting to see the outcome of the experiment.

Three moorhen chicks and their mother went happily about their business in the pond while we worked and there were plenty of fish, dragonflies and damselflies. The park was full of visitors, as you might imagine on a sunny Sunday in June, quite a few small children were envious of us paddling about.

Visit to the heronry in Macclesfield forest - Tues 4th June 2013

What a beautiful evening it was:-)

Six of us met outside the Leather's Smithy pub at Langley and got our walking gear on, ready to go and see the herons.

 

Unlike previous years when Kate has taken us on this walk, we decided to visit the heronry first rather than at the end of the walk. This was because, when both Kate and Sue visited the heronry independently in the few days previously, we'd each noticed that the herons were more active earlier in the evening, so thought it best to visit them first this time.

On our way to the heronry, we passed a family of mandarin ducks swimming along the reservoir (above) and another family of ducks climbing the steps at the side of the wier (below).

Unfortunately Sue and Hazel missed this second family of ducks as they were too busy nattering to notice them!

We stopped at two different view points when we got into sight of the heronry. There were some Canadian geese around as well as a coot and a Great Crested Grebe but the highlight was seeing the herons in the trees and some youngsters in the nest (unfortunately the photo's of the chicks in the nest didn't come out - they just looked like blobs on a nest of twigs).

However we did get a fairly decent shot of a youngster in a tree (below) with a nest in the branches above him and another nest (the one where the young chicks were) over to the left of the photo.

We'd all taken binoculars (and were envious of Ian's because they were super-dooper massive!!) and were able to see the herons and chicks clearly. It was a wonderful sight:-)

Before moving off to walk through the forest and back to the pub for drinks and eats, Andy took a group photo of us (below).

I don't know about the others but, despite putting anti-mozzie spray on, they got me anyway!!!

Back at the Leather's Smithy, a couple of us had a meal whilst the rest  just had something to drink and left around 10pm.
Our thanks to Kate who led the walk on what was a thoroughly enjoyable evening!

Broadleaf weed / invasive species removal at Styal 2 June 2013

Four of our volunteers turned out and met up with the rangers at Styal.

volunteer with "lazy dog" tool

Five of use spent the day removing Himalayan balsam, broad leaved dock, and ragwort from a field near the Bollin at the Alrincham Road end of the estate. We had some impact on the problem but there was a lot of dock to attack and quite a lot of it is still there. 

trampled sward and disturbed ground where docks have been removed