Hi all, I’m Luke and I’ve recently joined the team here at the West Sedgemoor reserves. This will be my second stint as an RSPB residential volunteer, having spent a year recently volunteering at RSPB Arne in Dorset, and I’m really excited to work and learn about all the wildlife found here on the Somerset Levels! It’s been an unusual start, as everything is nowadays. I did my induction with the Assistant Warden Paul over webcam from different rooms. It’s to ensure we’re Covid secure, but part of me wonders if he just doesn’t want to spend time with me!
The team is very small at the moment, with only essential work being carried out. I was lucky enough in my first week to join a brown hairstreak egg survey. We searched some of the hedgerows around the site, looking for the small white eggs, which also gave us the opportunity to inspect the hedges themselves and plan future coppicing and hedge-laying.
This week has seen us spend a lot of time down at Swell Wood. As mentioned in the previous blog, we’ve been thinning some of the oaks along the trails and opening up the canopy. With more space to grow, the remaining trees should be able to spread their limbs a little! The extra light reaching the ground should also hopefully encourage some long dormant wildflowers to emerge from the seedbank.
RSPB Staff
Further along, we’ve also been in to coppice some of the hazel stands. We do this on a rotation, which helps to create a more varied habitat, thus supporting more variety of species. By keeping the hazels from growing too large, we also help to create a denser understory, which is great for hazel dormice as they like to avoid the ground and cross the woodland along the stems and branches of trees.
All of this work should hopefully lead to a healthier, livelier, more vibrant woodland!
That’s all for this week. Next week I should be trying my hand at hedge-laying, so tune in to hear how that goes! See you then.