Nature of Britain Breathing Places - Recently Updated Pages

Patricia Ash's blog

Patriciaash — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 07:40:17 CDT

June 4th 08 Mud and woodpeckers
May 12th 08 Spring is busting out all over
April 18th 08 Pond dip
March 27th 08 Aliens return

February 27th - Life in the log pile
February 27th - The water shrew survey
February !5th - Learning about coppicing
December 17th - frosty winter day
Toughing it out - roe deer and muntjacs
Toughing out the winter - the birds
November 5th - The mystery of fungi
October 30th - Sunshine and autumn colours
October 25th - autumn woodland
October 9th - a carp is spotted
Late summer sun
Early autumn trees
June 18th - Toads on the go
June 4th - Life in the woodland
May

May 08 Spring is bustin out all over

Patriciaash — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 07:36:40 CDT

The woodland is very green now with the pale green new leaves of the trees casting a dappled shade when the sun is shining. The lake is full if life with pond skaters and water measurers skimming on the surface and vast numbers of tadpoles are swimming around. The lake is a tadpole soup and it was good to see a large group of toad tadpoles shoaling around the edge of the lake. Plump carp were circling around the tadpoles. Grass snakes are important predators of the tadpoles.

Large red damselflies were emerging from their final moult and puffing out their unfolded wings. There were some pairs mating which was a fascinating sight. The male grasps the female by the back of her head with his anal claspers and then he transfers sperm from his genitalia to a storage area underneath his first and second abdominal segments. The female then curves her abdomen around so that her genitalia are in contact with the male’s sperm storage area and the male transfers his sperm. This is why you see pairs of damsel flies (and dragonflies) in a wheel-like formation. After copulation the male keeps hold of the female’s head which prevents any other males from mating with her. The female lays her eggs in the water while the male is holding the back of her head. She perches on vegetation and dips the tip of her abdomen in the water. The couple fly to a number of egg laying spots and may also spend time perched on marginal vegetation.

Unfortunately small balsam is blanketing the woodland floor and the solution to the problem is way beyond simply pulling up the plants now. Small balsam is choking the new growth of dogs mercury which is one of our native woodland plants. Where rhododendron was cut back the dogs mercury is colonising the bare mossy ground but small balsam looks to win the battle. Although dogs mercury does not have the prettiest flowers and all parts of the plant are poisonous for people, the plant provides food for insects, including dogs mercury flea beetle and dogs mercury flea weevil as well as other weevils. Dogs mercury is associated with fungi, including the dewdrop dapperling. So the plant has its place in the woodland ecosystem.

Bugle is also crowded out by the small balsam. Bugle has bright blue flowers rich in nectar and pollen and is a magnet for bees and bee flies. The bees that use this plant include the buff tailed and white tailed bumble bees as well as the common carder bee. The flowers of small balsam are too small for these bees which cannot get a grip on the petals in order to be able to suck out the nectar. The nettle clumps seem to holding their own so far. I spotted many rolled up nettle leaves which are the coverings for the eggs of red butterflies such as the small tortoiseshell the red admiral and peacock butterflies. The bluebells however are unaffected by the small balsam. They completed flowering by the time the small balsam had grown to a significant size. Bluebells provide important nectar for bees which bite through the corolla (the tube bit of the flower) to get at the nectar. However it’s possible that the early growth of small balsam plants with their spreading leaves may shade out the light getting to the bluebell leaves which need to use the light energy to build up energy reserves for the bulb to develop new leaves and flowers in the following spring.

April 18th Pond Dip

Patriciaash — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 07:38:34 CDT

April 18th 08 Pond dipping Although the day was chilly and windy we braved the elements and carried out a pond dip using our cool professional pond dipping net. We found many very tiny dragonfly and damsel fly nymphs which were too small to be identified. Adult female dragonflies deposit their eggs in the water and the eggs hatch into aquatic juveniles, known as nymphs. Dragonfly nymphs are short and stubby and their development into an adult dragonfly takes up to 7-15 stages, each ending with a moult. The nymphs live in the water where they are voracious predators that catch and eat other invertebrates, small tadpoles and fish. Dragonfly nymphs catch their prey with a hinged lower jaw, (the technical term for it is the labium), which is aimed at and shot out at prey. The prey is gripped by the toothed edges of the labium, which is retractable. Once the nymph has grasped the prey, the labium is rapidly retracted under the head, and then the sharp tooth-like mandibles get to work chewing the victim. YouTube provides some good videos of dragonfly nymphs feeding, and viewing one or two of these videos is the best way to understand how the labium works. . As you will see if you view any of the videos, the labium shoots out and grasps the prey much faster than the prey can move. With each moult, the nymphs’ wings grow larger in proportion to the rest of the body until finally the last moult results in the emergence of the adult winged insect. In summer 2007, we spotted southern hawker, brown hawker, common darter and possibly ruddy darter dragonflies, but it is impossible at this stage to identify any of the nymphs as being any of these species. Damselfly nymphs are longer and thinner than dragonfly nymphs, and they have three long ‘tails’, which are in fact the gills..
Like dragonflies, damselfly nymphs are predators and they prey on invertebrates such as caddis larvae, freshwater shrimps and hog louse. Damselfly nymphs, also catch their prey with the labium, which is aimed at and shot out at prey. The labium is retracted back and then the victim is eaten. So the lake water contains insect predators. In turn the insect predators provide protein-rich food for the fish in the lake, including roach, rudd, and carp.

The largest insects we fished out of the lake were caddis fly larvae. These are the larvae of caddis flies which are important prey for fish. Most species of caddis fly have a larva that builds a case around itself. .The commonest species we found was the brown sedge which builds a case made of tiny sand grains around itself. Two hooks on the abdomen of the larva anchor the animal into its case. The larva then sticks bits of twig and stalk to the case, as can be seen in the photograph. We found individuals with prices of twig as long as 8 cm stuck to their cases. The twigs extend beyond the head which must be a considerable impediment to movement! Presumably the case with its attached twigs dissuades fish from trying to eat the larvae. When in the tray the larvae walked around so the cases Caddis larvae with cases feed on both animal and plant material, but the brown sedge mostly eats vegetation, especially dead leaves. So these apparently insignificant animals are busy converting dead leaves into fish protein. The freshwater habitat does have a very complex food web and the insects we have looked at here are but a small part of it

April 15th 08 Bluebells

Patriciaash — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 02:43:11 CDT

Although the spring weather has been dire we do have occasional spells of sunshine. The bluebells are starting to bloom in the sunny spots .

March 27th 08 Aliens return

Patriciaash — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 02:19:16 CDT

March 27th The alien plants return
Although rain was threatening today there were spells of sunshine too. A chiffchaff was singing loudly and supersonic long-tailed tits and blue tits were flying among the tree canopies. Then I realised that the thousands of two-leaved seedlings that are popping up all over the woodland are small balsam. I found a few with their 2nd pair of leaves developing which clinched the identification. There will be a huge covering of small balsam on the woodland floor this summer. The task of pulling them up would be very difficult. However I found that they were easy to pull up, their roots having little grip on the soil. The seedlings are loaded with water so the plant juices are left on the hand when pulling them up. Therecould be a risk of an allergic reaction developing on the hands in susceptible individuals, so wearing gloves is essential if you decide that you want to pull up some small balsam as well.

I walked up the slope to the old kitchen waste dump and there amongst the sprouting nettles were two reddish shoots of Japanese knotweed! This was the site where we discovered the single shoot of Japanese knotweed in 2007. That shoot was removed but clearly small pieces must have remained underground because now two have popped up whereas originally there was just one! The photograph shows the shoots two weeks later on, by which time they had grown and the leaves were uncurling. This find demonstrates the amazing power of Japanese knotweed to regenerate from tiny pieces of root. In fact the underground structure is not a root, it is an underground stem, known as a rhizome. The rhizomes form a dense underground network and spread rapidly. New growth can bud off from the rhizome but incredibly, new plants can also grow from bits of stem and shoot as small a centimetre long, smaller than the fragments produced by a shredder. This is how Japanese knotweed can thrive in compost heaps and rubbish dumps. It is now illegal to allow Japanese knotweed to become established in the wild, so we need to get rid of it quickly. So why are we making such a fuss about two little shoots of this plant? This is because Japanese knotweed can grow at an unbelievably rapid rate and bud off new plants forming thick woody clumps that choke all other vegetation including bracken. Japanese knotweed is not a food plant for most insects apart from those flying species that can feed on the nectar so plant and animal diversity are severely reduced where the knotweed is established. Alan Marham’s team did a good job in eradicating a clump of Japanese knotweed that was found hiding between some bushes about 7 years ago and they will do so again. The reappearance of this plant at a site far removed form the original site demonstrates the importance of vigilance!!

Feb visit

simonbudgen — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 07:21:24 CDT

I was very surprised when the team started talking about a Spring visit in February since I’ve always thought of February as the coldest month and the one most likely to have snow. But strolling out into Boars hill spring was in evidence with bulbs pushing through and shrubs flowering, not to mention the warm sunshine. I’d not walked round the grounds at this time of year before so the thing that first struck me were the drifts of golden daffodils, on closer inspection most of these looked like the native wild daffodils rather than one of the hundreds of cultivated forms. In a previous research job I’d spent many hours feeling for soft bottoms, training the fingers to search out that soft damp spot between the roots that spelt doom for any individual after a nasty attack of nematodes. Many of the cultivated forms of narcissus were particularly prone to this basal rot disease so would die out in a few years rather than spreading into extensive drifts across the forest floor.
Even though the daffodils look like the wild form they probably have been planted here rather than being a remnant natural population such as you can see growing in places like the Dymock woods in Gloucestershire. A few properly wild plants were also in full flower at Boars hill such as Primrose and Barren Strawberry.

The bird life was proclaiming spring with song evident throughout the day, I am sure Tom’s blog will give a full list. The ones that were most interesting to me were the group of 5 buzzards circling far above the site. Just a few years ago this would have got the local ornithologists very excited but now that they are not longer persecuted they have becoming a much more common sight and are often spotted lazily sitting in trees right beside the road.

How do you tell the difference between a centipede and a millipede? Well you count the legs of course. Millipedes have two pairs per segment and centipedes have one pair. If you look at the photo each segment is shown by the darker line and you can see there are two legs per segment. On the other side of the body there are another two legs in each segment (you can’s see them from this angle) and this means it’s a millipede. Millipedes are generally slow moving vegetarians whereas centipedes are venomous carnivores rushing around stabbing their prey with two large poison claws on either side of its head. One of the European species can give a painful bite that is potentially dangerous to humans, fortunately these are not normally found in UK.
We found 4 types of millipede under just one log, there were two of the normal cylindrical type but then one ‘flat back’ millipede which looks as if it has a flattened back and several pill millipedes. These can roll up into a ball tucking all their legs in and protecting their soft vulnerable parts.

One problem when taking these invertebrate photos is trying to get enough depth of field, only a very narrow plane a couple of millimetres wide is in focus even when you stop the lens down. So you have to position the camera with extreme precision and follow the moving beasties round keeping the exact distance away and try to arrange a nice composition showing the key identification features and getting the exposure correct and hoping they won’t vanish down a hole. Similarly sized subjects but which can be rather easier are mosses, the image of Bryum is actually a combination of 6 separate photos just taking the parts of each image that are in focus and combining them to give a single image with much greater depth of field than is possible with a single click of the shutter. However for this trick to work the subject and camera needs to be static so unfortunately does not work for the lively minibeastie s.

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simonbudgen — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 04:15:38 CDT

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March 27th 08 Alien plants return

Patriciaash — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 04:00:27 CDT

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'Make space for nature project' Homepage

janetsumner — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 01:11:55 CDT

Do you want a free calendar for 2008 packed full of events and activities to do all through the next year? Click here to find out how to order it:

February action day

janetsumner — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 02:56:33 CDT

Back to Foxcombe Hall - and again we were greeted by glorious weather, the sun shines on the righteous!
I went armed with hardhat, steel toe-capped boots, hi-vis jacket and saw.
My first job of the day was to get stuck into a bit of coppicing under Alan's supervision. To find out how I got on 'click here'

February 27th Life in the log pile

Patriciaash — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 12:40:23 CDT

February 27th We have a wonderful collection of rotting logs in the woodland . The big question is why do logs rot? A fresh log looks very solid but after 10 or so years of being on the woodland floor rotting is well under way. New logs on the ground are vulnerable to weather conditions, drying out in long hot summers, soaked in winter during long spells or rain and then subjected to freezing as well. Cracks begin to appear as the wood shrinks and expands and the bark starts to detach from the wood. Fungal and bacterial spores landing on the surfaces may germinate in cracks and send out their hyphae, long thread like structures which digest and absorb nutrients for the growing fungus. Fungi produce the enzymes which can digest some of the nutrients in wood leaving behind degraded crumbly remains.

When a piece of loose bark is lifted, woodlice scurry about in all directions until they find shelter. Woodlice do not have a waterproof cuticle and they breathe air with gills which have to be kept moist. So as you would expect, if woodlice are exposed to dry air for too long, their gills dry out and they die. Their scurrying about when exposed to bright light minimises their risk of drying out. As soon as the woodlouse finds itself in darkness and in high humidity e.g. under the bark, the animal remains there. There is plenty of food for woodlice in and around a rotting log as they feed on decaying leaves, wood and bark. In ecologists’ terms they are 'detritus feeders.' Millipedes are often seen under the rotting bark and underneath the log – we spotted pill millipedes which I mistook for a similar woodlouse species. My colleague Mike Dodd gently pointed out that you can tell that the pill millipede is not a woodlouse because it has 17-19 pairs of legs! Millipedes eat decaying leaves and decaying wood. Various small slugs and snails, use the log pile as shelter during daylight and emerge at night to feed on the woodland floor vegetation.. There are even brown lipped banded snails sheltering in the logs,This was unexpected because the soil here is not chalky or based on limestone and so is not rich in calcium, a mineral nutrient essential for making snails’ shells. We also found some very large beetle larvae in a very old log pile – the grubs were large and white with brown heads, and looked like stag beetle larvae so we did not disturb them as this is a protected species. These beetle grubs feed on the rotting wood and so contribute to the breaking down of the log pile. as well as providing food for birds.

In addition to the plant and detritus feeders in the log pile, there are predators. Violet ground beetles are commonly found in the log piles .These beautiful black beetles have a violet sheen and the edges of their wing cases are a bright violet.

They are predators and have sharp biting jaws that grasp and cut the prey. Violet ground beetles kill and eat the plant and detritus eating invertebrates, including slugs worms and woodlice. They hunt at night and spend the day resting under logs and bark. We have only seen solitary violet ground beetles. According to the information available for these insects they are solitary and aggressive towards each other. Brown centipedes are common too and they are seen running away at rapid speed when a piece of loose bark is lifted off the log. Centipedes’ bodies are divided into segments with one pair of legs on each segment – the brown centipede has 15 pairs of legs. The head has a pair of long antennae which are packed with sense organs. There is a pair of large pincers with poison glands attached on the head which are used to grasp and kill the prey. Any small invertebrates are prey for the brown centipedes which can run very fast. So the log pile is a mini-ecosystem, that includes fungi, animals that eat the rotting wood and decaying leaves, and also their predators. The rich community of invertebrates in the log pile provides food for birds and also shrews.

List of species at Foxcombe Hall

Patriciaash — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 06:34:27 CDT

Plants in grassland areas
Alkanet Pentaglossis sempervirens
Birds foot trefoil Lotus corniculatus picture
Bittercress Cardamine sp
Broad-leaved willowherb Epilobium montanum picture
Common ragwort Senecio jacobaea picutre
Creeping buttercup Ranunculus repens picture
Great mullein Verbascum thapsus picture
Mouse ear chickweed Cerastium fontanum
Self heal Prunella vulgaris picture
Wild parsnip Pastinaca sativa
Yorkshire Fog (a grass) Holcus

Lakeside and streamside flowering plants
Bugle Ajuga reptans
Cuckoo flower Cardamine pratensis picture
Common water plantain Alisma plantage-aquatica
Great willowherb Epilobium hirsutum picture
Hemp agrimony Eupatorium cannabinum picutre
Yellow iris Iris pseudacorusIris
Marsh bedstraw Galium palustre
Marsh thistle Cirsium palustre picture
Purple loosetrife Lythrum salicara picture
Swallow-wort Vincetoxicum hirundinari
Wild strawberry Fragaria vesca picture
Woody nightshade Solanum dulcamara

Lakeside and streamside ferns and liverworts
Hart’s tongue fern Asplenium scolopendrium
Lady fern Athyrium filix-femina

Animal species in lake water
Caddis fly larva Limnephilus sp
Common frog tadpoles and adults Rana temporaria
Freshwater shrimp Gammarus pulex more information
Hog louse Asellus sp
Mayfly nymph Caenis sp picture
Midge larva Chironomous sp more information
Pond skater Gerris lacustris more information
Ramshorn snail Planorbis sp picture
Toad (tadpoles) Bufo bufo more information

Animals around or on the lake
*visitors not resident on site, as far as we know.
Birds
*Heron Ardea cinerea
*Canada Goose Branta canadensis
Coot Fulica atra
*Mallard Anas platyrhynchos
Insects in flight
Common darter Sympetrum striolatum
Brown hawker Aeshna grandis
Southern hawker Aeshna cyanea
Reptiles
Grass snake Natrix natrix

Woodland floor and edge herbaceous flowering plants
Bluebell Hyacinthoides non-scripta picture
Dogs mercury Mercuralis perennis picture
Dog violet Viola riviniana
Foxglove Digitalis pupura picture
Ground ivy Glechoma hederacea picture
Hedge woundwort Stachys sylvatica picture
Herb robert Geranium robertianum picture
Lords and Ladies Arum maculatum picture
Primrose Primula vulgaris (garden varieties or hybrids with garden varieties) picture
Red campion Silene dioica
Scarlet pimpernel Anagallis arvensis
Small balsam Impatiens parviflora
Stinging nettle Urtica dioca picture
White bryony Bryonia cretica picture
White campion Silene latifolia
Wood anemone Anemone nemorosa picture
Wood meadow grass Poa nemoralis
Wood forget-me-not Myositis sylvatica picture
Wood sage Teucrium canadense picture

Woodland floor shrubs and climbers
Bramble Rubus fruticosus
Honeysuckle Lonicera xylosteum picture

Woodland floor fungi
Amethyst deceiver Laccaria amethystea
Charcoal burner Russula cyanoxantha
Common bonnet Mycena galericulata
Common earth –ball Scleroderma citrinum
Common parasol mushroom Lepiota procera
Common yellow russula Russula ochroleuca
Crab brittlegill Russula xerampelina
Drab bonnet Mycena aetites
Fly agaric Aminita muscaria
Hare's Foot Inkcap Coprinus lagopus
Milk cap Lactarius sp
Milky bonnet Hemimycena lactea
Navel toadstools Omphalina sp
Red cracking boletes Boletus chrysenteron
Shaggy ink cap Coprinus comatus
Shaggy parasol Macrolepiota rhacodes
The deceiver Laccaria laccata
Wood blewit Lepista nuda

Woodland edge fungi
Crested lepiota Lepiota cristata
Shaggy ink cap Coprinus comatus

Grassland fungi
Golden Spindles Clavulinopsis fusiformis

Log pile: invertebrate life
brown centipede Lithobius forficus
common rough woodlouse Porcellio scaber
pill millipede Glomeris marginata
violet ground beetle Carabus violaceus

Woodland floor ferns
Bracken Pteridium aquilinum
Buckler fern (Dryopteris austriaca
Male fern Dryopteris filis-mas

Woodland birds
blackbird Turdus merula picture
blue tit Parus caerulous picture
common buzzard Buteo buteo picture
carrion crow Corvus carone picture
chaffinch Fringilla coelebs
chiffchaff Phylloscopus collybita picture
coal tit Parus ater
collared dove Streptopelia decaocto
dunnock Prunella modularis
goldcrest Regulus regulus picture
greater spotted woodpecker Dendrocopos major picture
great tit Parus major
greenfinch Carduelis chloris
green woodpecker Picus viridis picture
jay Garrulus glandarius
long tailed tit Aegithalos caudatus picture
magpie Pica pica
nuthatch Sitta europaea picture
robin Erithacus rubecula picture
song thrush Turdus philomelos picture
swallow Hirundo rustica picture
swift Apus apus picture
red kite Milvus milvus
starling Sternus vulgaris
tawny owl Strix aluco
wood pigeon Columba palumbus
wren Troglodytes troglodytes

Woodland trees: native species
Broad-leafed species
Ash Fraxinus excelsior
Beech Fagus sylavatica
Common oak Quercus robur
Hawthorn Crataegus monogyna
Hazel Corylus avellana
Silver birch Betula pendula
White willow Salix alba
Wild cherry Prunus avium

Pine and other evergreen species
Holly Ilex aquifolium
Scots pine Pinus sylvestris
Yew Taxus baccata

Woodland trees: non-native species
Horse chestnut Aesculus hippocastanum

Learning about coppicing

djr7 — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 11:41:10 CDT

On a visit to the National Arboretum at Westonbirt I joined Jane Gray-Wallis to learn about coppicing. She is a volunteer who has her own section , known as a coup, in the old Arboretum which she is responsible for coppicing. The plan is to bring older neglected areas of woodland coppice back into management - an ideal opportunity for me to learn about coppicing before we start on work at Foxcombe Hall.

Listen to Jane talking about coppicing

The water shrew survey

djr7 — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 13:26:39 CDT

Alan Marham's blog

djr7 — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 15:35:16 CDT

Alan Marham Open University Grounds and Safety Manager
Hear Alan's thoughts on the site

February visit

targles — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 04:14:07 CST

Ranscombe in February – and I know this is starting to get repetitive, but yet another beautiful day. After the recent cold spell, a definite tang of Spring in the air. There were numerous small signs of the shift in season: glossy native bluebell leaves spiking through the crusty bracken and dead leaves on the woodland floor; patches of Dog’s Mercury Mercurialis perennis already with flower spikes; a Buff-Tailed Bumblebee Bombus terrestris queen seeking out possible nest sites for this year’s colony; and even a Peacock butterfly Inachis io catching some rays!

On a relatively calm day, I heard several bird species in decidedly territorial song mode. An unseen Goldcrest rehearsing its high-pitched diminuendo song from a conifer. Small mobs of Long-Tailed Tits with their buzzing chatter, flitting through the bushes looking for insects. A single Nuthatch, perhaps hoping for a mate. Best of all, perhaps, the distinctive drumming of a Greater Spotted Woodpecker, high up in a favourite tall tree with one branch pockmarked with holes the bird had excavated. One of Ranscombe’s great assets for wildlife is the standing deadwood – chock full of insects, and very handy for many hole-nesting birds too – and drumming woodpeckers prefer dead wood for its resonance. The further the sound carries, the better their chance of attracting a mate.

Although Ranscombe has a good stock of natural nesting sites for birds, many areas of Britain are not so lucky. Putting up birdboxes is an easy way to help the birds out, and in return may allow you insights into their private lives! There’s an infinite variety of different types to suit different bird species, but a few simple rules will improve your skills as an avian estate agent:

Put boxes out of reach of predators (e.g. cats), on an east or northeast-facing site (south-facing is too warm)
Shelter from rain and prevailing wind, and make sure rain doesn’t seep into the hole by tilting it slightly downwards.
Site boxes a good distance away from bird feeders.
Nearby perches allow adults to stop and check around before visiting the nest.
Clean out boxes in September (after breeding season), and in January (after winter roosting) to avoid disease.

There are more details about nestboxes of all kinds here:

My craving for manual labour took me back to the ditches I cleared on the last visit. One drain, a pipe under the path, had a gratifyingly clear trickle of water, but all the other drains had clogged up with leaves and orange, iron-rich clay. I scraped these as clear as I could in the time, but ideally we need to design a better solution. The clear pipe had some wire mesh at the inlet, which seemed to keep both leaves and clay at bay.

For me, this visit epitomized why I got involved in Breathing Places: a chance to ditch the office, leave work behind for a day, and soak up the atmosphere of a British spring woodland with all its various pleasures, from bluebells to bumbles.

Tom Argles's Blog

djr7 — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 13:58:54 CST

Lovely weather for our first visit to Foxcombe Hall. When the date was originally set I’d pictured us all tramping round doggedly in a mixture of drizzle and mud, but we had baking sunshine more reminiscent of June. So it was great to get out of the office and walk round the grounds with Alan, the site manager. Hear Tom's thoughts on the site: Tom's thoughts

From formal gardens round the Hall, we wended our way down past an impressive (but neglected) rockery before plunging into the rather untidier woodland downhill. The rockery was at least partly constructed using the local stone, a honey-coloured, iron-rich gritty sandstone known as the Greensand. It hails from the Cretaceous period, and is just over 100 million years old. Capping the ridge here, it breaks down to a light, free-draining soil which seems mildly acidic from the plants that grow here – we’ll test this at our next visit.

Springs and streams seeping down in the woodland mark where this rock overlies the impermeable Kimmeridge Clay. In the woodland, we were assailed by birdsong – another reminder that this was spring rather than summer! Every songster was proclaiming its territory vigorously. Among the usual suspects I could pick out Blue and Great Tits, Blackbird, Robin, Chaffinch, Goldfinch, and softly cooing Wood Pigeons. From the tangle of a rampant honeysuckle erupted an explosive song: a Wren. Farther off, a Green Woodpecker treated us to its mildly hysterical, laughing call. Later in the day we heard the more discreet ‘tchink’ call of a Greater Spotted Woodpecker. Perhaps the most evocative song was the distinctive refrain of a Chiffchaff ringing out like a soloist above an orchestra. Later, we glimpsed another archetypal summer visitor, a single Swallow, flickering against the clear blue sky.

The merging of garden into woodland provides a real mix of habitats. Several tall conifers planted on the slope provide a nesting site for a solitary pair of Carrion Crows, and sanctuary for the tiny Goldcrest, with its high-pitched wheedling song. Numerous wild cherry trees promise food for Bullfinch (new buds) and perhaps Hawfinch (cherry stones). The number of young oaks was slightly surprising, until we sighted a Jay. These birds eat acorns, hoarding any surplus by caching them, as squirrels do, in the ground. Even the Jay’s impressive memory cannot recall every hidden acorn, so the oak has recruited a willing forester to spread its seed, and this may explain how the oaks have spread here (though no doubt grey squirrels have also played a part). Despite the exuberant birdsong, there are no bird (or bat) boxes in the grounds, so there’s one addition we could make, supplementing existing nest sites such as standing dead trees. Further work will need careful thought – we don’t want to jeopardise the wildlife already thriving here. Often, in making space for nature, it’s what you leave alone that’s as important as what you change.

Panoramas and video clips

MikeD_ou — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 08:16:16 CST

Click here to see our first video clip of the site and meet Dr Janet Sumner who will talk you through an introduction to the OPEN UNIVESITY'S 'Breathing Places - Make Space for Nature' site.

January 16th Yet more mud

djr7 — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 04:26:12 CST

January 16th 2008 We still have plenty of mud, but signs of spring are suddenly popping up all over the woods. Hazel catkins appeared quite suddenly on January 16th and they were being blown about in the wind. They were not quite horizontal perhaps closer to 45o! The catkins are the male flowers of the hazel tree. Each catkin is packed with pollen and when the pollen is mature the individual pollen grains become very loose and the slightest breeze puffs out small yellow clouds. Vast quantities of pollen are produced and with wind pollination being so random, the chances of pollen grains landing on a female hazel flower are very small indeed. The female flowers are much less conspicuous, each being a tiny red tuft of bristles. The pollen from one hazel tree cannot fertilise the female flowers on that same tree, an arrangement which prevents inbreeding. Fertilization of a flower by a pollen grain stimulates development of the hazel embryo and its food supply, ending in the formation of hazel nuts, each about 2cm in diameter. Hazelnuts are found in clusters of two or three and they are eaten by squirrels mice and woodpeckers, and are an important food source in the winter. Squirrels cache hazel nuts in the ground and dig them up in the winter but they forget some of them which remain in the soil, where they have the opportunity to germinate and grow into a new hazel bushes. The primroses were coming back to life as well with healthy green leaves developing. It was good to see the bluebell plants popping up through the leaf litter too. We have a male great tit singing constantly and can hear the loud raucous squawks of the pair of jays, which are essentially crows in fancy dress.

January 11th Mud mud glorious mud

djr7 — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 04:25:30 CST

January 11th The main feature of the woodland so far this month is mud, and lots of it, black mud, brown mud and black treacly ooze! The sloping paths from the rockery down to the lake are covered with leaf litter which hides the horrors lurking underneath. There has been a lot of rain this month so there water is welling up from the springs and seeps and the paths are waterlogged. It is essential to tread carefully because treading in a patch of ooze results in sinking up to the ankles. Pulling out one’s foot, hopefully with boot still attached, is accompanied by a delightful slurping ‘pop’. Wellington boots are the ideal footwear as there is a high risk of shoes being sucked into the mud! However, the wet climate is not bad for all the woodland life. The mosses and liverworts are thriving and look a bright healthy green against the backdrop of dark wet tree trunks and dark brown leaf litter. Identifying mosses and liverworts is a specialised skill that I do not have, but I believe that some beautiful clumps of woodland moss are Polytrichum sp. I would not want to try and identify the species though until I have studied the reproductive structures with a microscope. Mosses have an aquatic phase in their life cycles. Their green fronds have male reproductive organs which produce free swimming male gametes which very much resemble sperm. However examination with a microscope shows that the moss male gametes are single cells with two thread like flagellae. These swim through the surface film of water propelled by their flagellae, attracted to the female egg cells which remain attached to the moss plants. When an egg cell is fertilised by the male gamete an embryo develops and grows forming a stalk and a capsule full of developing spores. When ripe the capsule bursts open and millions of tiny spores are dispersed. Very few of them land in suitable spots for germination and growth into new mosses. The good news is that in fact the first signs of spring are here already, in spite of the mud, the cold and the murky light conditions. The sun does come out occasionally and on this rare sunny afternoon, I spotted many daffodil shoots springing up through the leaf litter. These daffodils are not of the wild type, as they were planted to enhance the old woodland garden. It is good to see them nevertheless. There are no signs of any bluebell shoots yet, but the primrose rosettes have started to grow new leaves. The leaf buds of our native deciduous trees such as beech, oak and sycamore show no signs of growth so far. However the azalea buds are swollen and green already. Azaleas are non-native garden species, growing wild in North America, and they show great variation in flower colour and shape and hybridise with each other. Very few large fungi are around at this time of year but there is a healthy looking bracket fungus growing on a rotting wood tree stump. The stump itself is covered with bright green moss, so it's a welcome splash of colour in the mud! .