Last weekend was volunteer Sunday and after last month’s work party was cancelled due to heavy snow, everyone was keen to get out on site and get stuck in despite the pouring rain!
The group started in the woodland, clearing up felled sycamore brash and logs. We fell a small number of sycamore trees every winter as part of our ongoing woodland management. This helps to increase the light levels penetrating to the woodland floor, making it better for ground flora and opens up the canopy to create more space for the many oak trees in the woodland to expand. And the brash and logs aren’t wasted, they are used to create habitat piles dotted around the woodland. These piles are great little nesting areas for birds and are full of invertebrates and fungi making use of the dead wood.
In the afternoon, we planted up around 80 young hawthorn trees to fill the gaps by the sides of the viewing screen and to create a scrub block around one of our work areas. And you will notice the next time you are at the Phase 1 viewing screen that we have also replaced the old bird feeder posts with some more natural looking ones, sourced from our very own woodland.
Unfortunately, poor weather restricted wildlife watching activities throughout the day, however we weren’t disappointed, as on arrival back at the office for lunch, a red kite was spotted flying over the processing plant heading south east. This is the second red kite seen at Langford in the last week after warden, Paul Bennett recorded one last weekend and is an excellent record for the site.
Thanks to everyone who attended the day, especially as the weather was not on our side!
It was rather wet and cold as we planted up hawthorn trees on Phase 1!
Thanks to Barrington Randle for the photo.