Last weekend was once again time for our monthly volunteer Sunday work party and as always everyone arrived ready to get stuck in (on a beautiful warm and sunny morning too!).
This month’s task was ‘green haying’ our new footpath loop around Phase 2 and the old silt lagoon 7. Green haying is a nice little technique that involves spreading hay on bare areas of earth. The seeds within the hay then drop to the ground and become established. This method is ideal as the hay used has come from our own Phase 1 grassland, therefore we are recreating the floristic diversity of Phase 1 (along with it’s associated invertebrate and vertebrate fauna) on the new footpath.
The group transported 11 large bales of hay (all by hand!) from Phase 1 and distributed the hay along the whole length of the new footpath – a whopping 1100m length – an exhausting task, but lots of fun! We should start seeing results of our green haying from next year onwards.
Carrying on the seeding theme, the group also collected seed rich cuttings from the high level water carrier bank, This area contains masses of bird’s-foot trefoil and lady’s bedstraw, two species we like to encourage in our grasslands and brilliant for a wide range of insects such as common blue butterflies and small elephant hawk-moths.
And as always, the wildlife didn’t disappoint, with views of a juvenile marsh harrier over Phase 2, yellow wagtail calling overhead and large numbers of migrant hawker dragonflies feeding over the scrub on the western side of Phase 1.
A huge thank you to all who attended the day and thanks also to Barrington Randle for his photos below....
Myself and Barrington transporting the hay.
We had rolled some bales quite a distance by the end of the morning!
Sue at work distributing the hay across the path.
Finished!
All images courtesy of Barrington Randle.