Working on a nature reserve, we tend to think of the year in two halves; the noisy and grubby habitat management season (September to February) hopefully laying the groundwork for good results in the survey season (March to August). However, as we look forward to the Christmas break, it invites us to view the year as a whole and on reflection, 2017 has been a fantastic year for our Swale reserves.
At Blean we have seen another really good year for our coppice species, particularly nightingale - a direct result of the many years of ongoing management for this threatened species. Heath fritillary also had a much needed resurgence after a couple of wet summers in the past few years. At Seasalter we were able to get the fields wetter than ever before which helped bring in some interesting and diverse bird species to breed at the reserve. In addition, many long hours of pennywort control resulted in a more stunted growth rate than in previous years.
All in all, these positive upturns are entirely a result of the fantastic effort from our ever growing volunteer work force. Without our volunteers dedicating countless hours into improving the sites for wildlife we would never have made such gains during the year. Thank you to everyone who has been involved, we’re looking forward to 2018 and all the successes that it will bring!
Nick and Sam
Blean Woods
Rides
As soon as 1st September arrived we started our main task – the cutting of 3,200m of the ride network. Our volunteers have been out in force, with the chainsaw and clear up team working their way along the rides and clearing big openings, 20m back from the path. We have flown through this work and by the beginning of December all felling was completed, with just a few rides to clear up! A fantastic effort from the whole team.
As we are now into the third year of the ride widening project, we are starting to see our efforts take shape as previous years’ work on sections of the ride have now received the full treatment of scalloping, oak thinning and mulching of the ride edge. As more light is able to reach the forest floor and the competitive growth of young tree saplings is suppressed by the forestry mulcher, it will be fantastic to see how the ride edges develop floristically.
Coppicing
This year we contracted out 3 hectares of mixed coppice, all focused in the north-east corner of the reserve. A lot of this coppice was very overgrown and the plots looked like they would benefit from being cut, as well as providing us with some excellent quality firewood to sell. Within any coppice plot it is important to retain standard trees and not only do we try to keep a diverse mix of species, we also try to have a wide representation of ages within the plot so that we don’t end up with a large number of mature trees and little or no young trees. Blean is very well off for mature oaks so we have focussed on the retention of young beech, hornbeam and birch trees to grow up and form the next generation of mature standards. The work was completed within 2 months, which is an excellent turnaround and meant that we avoided the plots and tracks being damaged as the weather stayed dry throughout. Next year we will thin out some of the standard trees within these plots to allow more light in which will help the coppice regeneration and improve the structure of the remaining standard trees.
Standard thinning
Alongside the coppicing work we also had our annual standard thinning across last year’s rides and coppice plots. 45 trees were felled over 2 coppice plots and 3 rides, which will help to let more light onto the woodland floor, thus improving development of flora, regeneration of coppice stools and the enhancement of form and structure of the remaining standard trees. We also ringbarked a handful of trees to create more standing deadwood within the woodland which will provide important habitat for invertebrates and create nesting and feeding opportunities for our resident woodpecker species.
Oaks are numbered, measured and sold, with proceeds going back into our conservation and maintenance works.
Mulching
We continued our expansion of the ride network with an additional 62,670m2 of forestry mulching. This year we had an impressive purpose built mulcher on site which did a fantastic job of grinding out stumps and levelling some of the challenging areas of terrain on the ride network. By clearing the stumps and woody vegetation from the initial 7m of the ride we are looking to eliminate quick growing, competitive tree species and give space for a rich, herbaceous floral community to develop. This will provide excellent habitat for butterflies, bees and other invertebrate species that will benefit from increased nectar sources. With the expanded ride network we are looking to create ecological corridors throughout the woods that can be utilised by our rare, heath fritillary butterfly as we look to expand its range throughout the site.
Glades
Glades are hugely important areas in a woodland and provide a permanent open space for grasses and wildflowers to thrive. In turn this provides a vital nectar source for pollinating insects, which join the food chain and supports the woodland bird population. Every year we manage the glades on a biennial cutting rotation, meaning that we remove roughly half of the summer’s growth and leave the other half as a refuge for over-wintering invertebrates. Our interns – Laurie, Victoria and Rebecca took this task on and made their way around the site, cutting back multiple glades where they focused on removing the more competitive, woody vegetation such as tree saplings and bramble that would dominate the glades if left. This work was followed up by groups of volunteers raking up the cuttings and removing them from the glades, so as to prevent nutrient build up in the soil which would lead to nettles dominating the area and suppressing wildflower growth. Wildflowers and grasses tend to thrive on poor soils, so the clearing up process is just as important as the cutting.
Heath
The large heath restoration has come on leaps and bounds since our last update. In the last 3 months we have seen some landscape changes which began with 1.6 hectares of cut and collect mowing. This involved using a tractor mounted with a large flail mower and a box for collecting all the cuttings – a bit like a giant lawn mower! The machine cut through dense heather and scrub at a fantastic rate and opened up the heath to create a diversity of vegetation layers. This work creates nesting and foraging habitat for our key heathland bird species, nightjar and tree pipit.
Although it looks quite barren after the cut and collect mowing, this area will soon regenerate with young ling heather!
Shortly after this, the new grazing livestock arrived. We welcomed a small herd of young Bagot goats to the reserve in early October with the aim of keeping some of the more competitive vegetation in check. As we look to have a heathland dominated by slow growing dwarf shrubs like heather and gorse, the quicker growing species such as silver birch and bramble need to be kept in check. Goats are browsers (meaning that they will eat anything!) and are not afraid to munch through woody vegetation, which is perfect for keeping young tree saplings in check and stopping the heath from turning into a young woodland. The grazing project is joint venture with Hadleigh Farm Rare Breeds Centre in Essex who are providing us with the livestock on a long-term loan. We will look to substantially expand the herd over the next few years. This works well for both parties – as rare heathland habitat is conserved as well as the Bagot goat itself, one of the oldest and rarest species in the UK.
More recently we have been felling some of the large clumps of birch and over mature gorse within the heath. This will help to create new open ground for heather and opportunities for new stands of gorse to establish. Stand-alone, character trees are being retained to provide song perches for birds and shelter for livestock in poor weather conditions.
Bridge
There are no quick fixes on nature reserves – everything takes time and the bridge project was no exception. Three years on from an observation by one of our contractors in his tractor – “I’m not driving over that” (he did), we finally have our new bridge. This has been built to safely take the weight of the timber lorries, 45 tons when fully loaded. Whilst not very exciting compared to the habitat management, the tracks and crossing points are vital in keeping the site going, allowing us to get our contractors and volunteers in and our timber out!
Wildlife
As the season changes and the summer ends we always expect a quiet period for wildlife in the woods, but that doesn’t mean that it’s gone away! Mixed flocks of long-tailed tits, blue tits and great tits can be seen roaming the woods and winter visitors such as fieldfare, redwing, brambling and siskin have all been spotted since November. It’s also a great chance to see some of our more secretive resident species that are often concealed by the leafy canopy in spring. Lesser spotted woodpecker, nuthatch and treecreeper are all still present in the woods and with a little bit of patience can be seen darting around and calling amongst the bare branches of the high forest canopy.
Interns and Volunteers
This year has also been very productive for former interns and some of our young volunteers. Volunteering at a nature reserve can be fantastic experience to add to your CV and is an essential part of breaking into the conservation sector. Former intern, Rob Dixon, is now the assistant ranger at Leeds Castle where he will be helping to manage their large estate and extensive woodland. Stuart Harris, who was an intern alongside Rob, completed a contract with the Forestry Commission monitoring for the Oak Processionary Moth in green spaces around London and has started a MSc degree at Canterbury Christ Church University where he will be studying the heath fritillary butterfly! Earlier in the year Maya Butler left us to start full-time work with Natural England and Seasalter volunteer Caroline Ponsonby recently started a job in a research lab in Kent. Thank you all for your efforts at Blean and Seasalter!
Seasalter Levels
Grassland
Our annual topping (mowing) at Seasalter went ahead and we were lucky with the weather so the machines were in and out in no time at all. As well as wading birds, the grassland also plays host to large flocks of meadow pipits, skylarks and starling. All these species depend on a mixed sward with shorter grasses maintained by the cattle and the toppers as well as longer patches bordering the edges of the fields. The diversity in sward height provides them with open areas to catch insects (often attracted by the huge amounts of dung the cattle leave behind!) and tall, tufty tussocks for concealment.
Ditching
We continued our ditching work and the contractors completed another 650m of desilting. The slubbings that are extracted are then used to plug low points in the fields so we are able to hold more water on the grassland and provide better habitat for winter waders and wildfowl and next year.
Hydrology
One of the big winter tasks is the rolling out of our lay flat pipe so we can mechanically pump water onto the grassland from the ditch network. Each year we have 1650m of pipes to spread across 9 fields. This year it took us 2 work parties to complete but we have now started flooding and wintering lapwing are appearing on the site.
Pennywort
The fight against pennywort is on-going, but this year we felt like we’d turned a small corner. After many years of vigilant work parties scouring the ditches and removing every bit of pennywort in sight, it seemed like this years’ growth was somewhat weakened. Not that it hasn’t been a huge task with many hours spent removing mats of growth and transporting them to the composting area. Much of this work was led by our excellent group of interns who have spent many hours in the boat making their way along the ditch network and keeping our watercourses in check.
An acquired taste - cattle at Seasalter seem to like pennywort!
With the hydrology works only just underway, we have had quite a quiet start to our WeBs surveys. There have still been some exciting highlights though, including: marsh harrier, peregrine falcon, lapwing, bearded tit, yellow wagtail, little grebe and kingfisher.