Back in early spring, we began surveying our poplar plantations for breeding birds. Katherine the warden took on East Wood, Dave the Site Manager and Suzanne from the office braved the wild West Wood and I was assigned the smaller Trial Wood (I think they were being kind to me for my first season!) Despite the small size of my survey area, I still managed to rope in a couple of knowledgeable assistants on some of my surveys, so thank you to Martin and Gavin for the extra help! Once a week we arrived at the reserve for a 6.30am start, having checked the weather forecast and supposedly picked the best day of the week. As we all seemed to come on different days, I’m not sure what this says about the standard of weather forecasting or our ability to understand/trust it! It’s a lovely time of day to be at the reserve anyway and I thoroughly enjoyed carrying out these surveys.
Using a territory mapping methodology, we walked our survey areas and plotted all bird locations onto a map. The map also needed to show the bird activity, for example if the bird was in song, alarm calling, carrying food or occupying a nest. The maps could quickly become very busy, with lots of action and movement. With the cuckoos and golden orioles often appearing in Trial Wood this added to the excitement, along with the hope of spotting a nest. We also quickly realised that the woods were full of wrens and there was a blackbird in East Wood that could do a pretty nifty impression of a golden oriole. My attachment to the birds of Trial Wood grew rapidly throughout the surveying and I would often be disappointed if I didn’t record ‘my’ cetti’s warbler or ‘my’ chiffchaff in their usual location. The picture below shows one of my visit maps from the end of May – a busy time!
Photo credit: Ali Blaney – Trial Wood visit map
The fieldwork ended in late June and we are now starting to compile our species maps from the visit maps. This involves plotting the registrations for one particular species onto a new map, along with the activity codes. From these species maps we can then estimate breeding bird numbers and define territory clusters. With the results due to be submitted by the beginning of September, you’ll no doubt find us at our desks over the next couple of weeks busily identifying our territory clusters.
In other news, ragwort pulling continues apace (all help welcomed!) while Bittern Watch is drawing to an end. The past two weeks have proved slightly tricky weather-wise, as shown below. It was a bit difficult spotting bitterns any distance away (luckily people in other positions can pick up those!) but the mist did clear eventually. With a last analysis taking place, hopefully we’ll be able to report our final number of nests in the next week or so, along with our tally of marsh carpet moth larvae.
Photo credit: Ali Blaney – a misty bittern watch at Joist Fen North
Finally, David mentioned last Friday that the common lizards were enjoying the sunshine in the staff car park. Hopefully Dave will supply a better picture shortly but in the meantime, here is a photo of one of them – a rather heavily pregnant individual!
Photo credit: Ali Blaney - common lizard
Hi Rich
The Trial Wood got its name because it was literally an experimental plantation for Bryant and May, when they owned the site for the production of matchsticks. Different species of hybrid poplar were planted there, to see which were best suited to the ground conditions. Some turned out to be more susceptible to poplar rust (a disease caused by pathogenic fungi). The different hybrids were planted in stands so if you look very closely you should be able to spot the differences and see where some blocks are doing better than others!