First, a note from the Warden, Nick Covarr:
With woodland work, everything moves very slowly and the results can take a little time to filter through. This was recently brought home to me when I visited a ride that our team cut back in September 2014. At the time it was my first week working at Blean Woods and, in between learning everyone’s names, I was working with the team to cut and clear a section of ride near the Sarre Penn. Last summer it started to regenerate but it was nothing compared how utterly fantastic it looks this summer. It was thoroughly worth 20 months of waiting! With our substantial ride plans for the next few years, I certainly hope that sights like these will become a much more common site in the future.
Andrew Poole, the Deputy Warden (whose photos are included below) continues:
Stacking up the habitat piles
When the winter season’s chainsawing is finished, there is still an enormous amount of logs, brash and general chaos left to tidy up. As a result, the first few weeks of March were very busy dealing with all that. The results can now be seen, with green shoots already starting to sprout on the coppice stools and the ground flora beginning to show the benefits of warmth and light penetrating the soils. Ride clearance can be a long and tiring job so but seeing the results makes it all worthwhile.
The heath
We recently recruited two new Konik ponies who will live alongside our existing pair to help them eat the young birch growth invading the heath. During their first few weeks we will be keeping a particularly close eye on our new residents to check that they are settling in. Some of the volunteers have replaced the corral in preparation for the new arrivals. It looks very impressive now (photo below) and is a great example of what we can do with our own timber supplies on the reserve.
Woodland inventory
Pairs of volunteers have been surveying woodland coppice plots for tree ages and species. It took weeks of map reading and measuring distance using metre wheels, to cover all 300 half-hectare plots. This information will play an enormous role in setting up the Blean Woods’ coppice plan for the next 18 years, ensuring the more mature areas of coppice, of higher timber value, are targeted first, giving younger growth a chance to develop.
Our coppicing at Blean Woods is done on rotation to ensure a mosaic of habitats is maintained, with a range of growth stages present throughout the woods. Most coppice plots are done near the extensive path and ride network to provide networks of open space for butterflies, bumblebees and dragonflies. Coppicing benefits woodland wildlife enormously - such as the nightingales mentioned below.
Signs
Another recent project has led to some smart new signs around the reserve, which give visitors information on key species and the type of management work being carried out. They’re located in some of the most popular areas, where hopefully plenty of visitors will see them. They are designed in such a way that they can be easily updated to keep things fresh.
Blean Woods surveys
There have been a number of surveys undertaken throughout the spring by staff and volunteers including regular point counts. These involve the surveyors visiting certain specified points in the woods and standing there for a few minutes to see which birds they can hear. All the results and maps are still to be fully analysed but the final figures should be available soon. One thing that is already known is that it has been a very good year for nightingales so far, with 49 singing males on site, more than any year since 1990. Territory mapping of nightingales shows they rely on the coppice plots cut over the last decade, which is very satisfying for those who have contributed to creating those habitats.
Photos below show bluebells and stitchwort, building the new corral and two of the Konik horses