Hi all,
It’s been 3 months since I started here as assistant warden and the time has absolutely flown by! I came to Blean and Seasalter looking for a new challenge and it has been an excellent experience so far doing a variety of jobs across 2 really interesting sites. It’s been great becoming reacquainted with some of the people I worked alongside a couple of years ago, as well as meeting a whole load of new faces.
We are now deep into our habitat management work and we are making good progress. Thanks to all for turning out so regularly, even at the tail end of August when we had some seriously hot weather. It shows real dedication and we really appreciate it! You can be sure we will all be missing that heat in the months to come as the cold weather seems to have properly set in now.
We are sadly down to 2 interns now as Sophie had to change her plans, but we wish her all the best and hope to see her again soon. Ben and Adam have now successfully passed all their practical training courses including chainsaw, brushcutter and quad bike. They are busy getting experience using all these machines out on the reserves and gaining valuable experience towards their future careers in conservation. The internship programme at Blean is proving a real success with the interns getting experience and knowledge of working on a nature reserve and the reserves benefiting from their hard work and dedication.
Looking to the future we are well on course to complete our most important winter work at both sites – the widening of the ride network at Blean and the removal of scrub and pennywort at Seasalter. Thanks for your continued support and assistance on the reserves!
Enjoy reading below,
Sam
Blean Woods
Volunteer work parties
We started the year by finishing off 2 of last year’s coppice plots that weren’t quite finished in time. As previously mentioned, it was very hot in these first few weeks, but we got through it and finished the plots up nicely.
Our big task this year is our ride work and we are making fantastic progress with 4 sections completed already totalling around 1240km in distance so far. A really impressive start. The aim is to make our rides wider than they have ever been previously by pushing them back 20m from the middle of the path. The idea is that we will let more light into the woodland and create a varied array of habitats in the process, starting at the path with low growing ground flora and short grass. This will lead into a taller, herbaceous edge rich in wildflowers as nectar sources for invertebrates. After that the scrub edge will be retained as valuable habitat for passerines, before leading into a high forest tree line. This mosaic of habitats will help some of our key species such as nightingale that nest in scrubby coppice and the heath fritillary butterfly that rely on common cow wheat as a food plant, which is prevalent in our rides.
Although most of our volunteer work so far has been put into cutting and dragging on the rides, we have also been mowing. The path edge habitat at the centre of the ride is maintained by bi-annual mowing across the whole site. This makes the paths accessible for the public, but also helps wildflowers and grasses to establish and disperse seed. The bulk of this work has been carried out by Joe, with some assistance from Ben and Adam towards the end, so a special thanks to him for leading on this task.
We have also made great progress in cutting most of our glades this year already. The glades are permanently open areas within the woods for wildflowers, grasses and bare ground – all important habitat for wildlife. Every year we cut 50% of each glade to give the other half a chance to seed over, to prevent bramble and tree saplings from taking over and to retain habitat for overwintering invertebrates. For the final few glades, which are cut on a longer rotation, we have borrowed a pedestrian mower from Great Bells Farm to help deal with some of the woody vegetation within, including some mature heather stands. By cutting some of the heather we hope to introduce some areas of young heather to represent the shrub in a variety of its growth stages. These open heathy areas should also benefit our nightjar population.
Our contractors have been flying through the coppice work with 3.5 hectares finished already. No doubt they have been helped by the good weather we experienced in September and October. They have a few more plots to finish as well as some ride work, oak thinning and stump grinding along the ride edges. It will be great to see the results of this next spring and summer.
In the middle of August we hosted a bat walk at Blean. The walk was led by Kent Bat Group members John Puckett and Hazel Ryan. Hazel was kind enough to bring along some rescued bats that are not strong enough to be released into the wild. She showed the bats to the group and it was fascinating to see the detail in the wing structure and learn about hunting techniques and habitats. Although it was a still evening, it was a little cold, so the walk only garnered a couple of common pipistrelles in flight, but the information John and Hazel had to depart was worth the trip alone.
On the first weekend of November we also hosted a fungi foray on a bright Saturday morning. The walk was packed out and we had to turn people away a couple of days before! Local expert Martin Newcombe led the walk and did a fantastic job. He has a broad knowledge of fungi and told us where you were likely to find each species, some interesting folklore and most importantly for the group – which ones are edible! Walking around Blean it was interesting to see how many species we have when you really start looking. The event raised £111 for the RSPB and it was great to see a diverse age range of people, from small children to adults.
Seasalter Levels
The fight against pennywort at Seasalter goes on! In the last couple of weeks of August we heaved out several trailer loads prior to a 2 day spraying session by some local contractors. The spraying has had some effect in keeping it at bay, but due to the extended warm weather we have since started to get back out in the boat and try to pick out every last bit of new growth along the ditch edges. It’s a long process, but it will help us keep Seasalter in good shape coming into next spring.
We have started really hitting back the scrub along the edges of the grazing marsh fields. We now have a huge mountain of hawthorn, blackthorn and bramble to start burning, so that should keep us warm over the next few cold weeks.
Contractors were out topping the fields around Seasalter in September and cattle stocking densities are high to keep the sward short. Hopefully we will see the benefits of this work with the winter migrants starting to come back through. Some fields on the LNR were inaccessible to the contractors huge machines (pictured below), so we ended up doing them ourselves with the quad mower which has proved to be a god send!
As September rolled around, so did the start of our WeBS counts. Although the initial couple of months are usually fairly quiet as the winter migrants are still coming in, so far highlights have been bearded tits, marsh harriers, a peregrine falcon and much higher numbers of snipe than last year. As Seasalter gets wetter in the coming months we hope to see bigger flocks of wildfowl and waders arriving.
Speaking of Seasalter getting wetter, this has been greatly aided by our new pump system that came recently. The new pump allows us to extract water from the ditches for 15+ hours at a time meaning that we no longer have to run back and forth to Seasalter to refuel the tank throughout the day! We are now in the process of wetting up the fields and the rills for wintering wildfowl and waders. The rills are a network of shallow channels within the fields at Seasalter that hold water and become ideal foraging habitat for wetland birds at this time of year. By pumping onto the fields we are able to keep the fields wet, even during spells of dry weather that we so often get in East Kent.
The work to re-profile the ditches at Seasalter began in November with an excavator coming in to start the dredging. In the years prior to the RSPB’s involvement at Seasalter the ditches had not received regular management and therefore had become overgrown with reeds which choke them up and prevent water from being able to flow through. This meant that we couldn’t have grazing on the fields around the perimeter as a dry ditch could lead to cattle escaping and that is a risk our graziers can’t take. Ditches act as wet fences on grazing marsh sites and also serve as a water source for cattle. By being able to put cattle on to these fields we are now able to get the sward in suitable condition for breeding waders come spring.
Ditches are also important for habitat for wildlife and can be home for species such as water vole, reed and sedge warbler, bearded reedling and a variety of dragonfly species. The current ditch work is the start of a rotational management system that will provide Seasalter with open water ways alongside suitable habitat for wildlife.