Morning everyone,
I hope that you are well.
I just wanted to let you know what has been going on behind the scenes at the reserve, management wise! Here at Rye Meads we have a great team of volunteers that go outside and keep the reserve looking great - we call these our management team. All the work that is completed on the reserve is planned and organised in accordance to our 5 year management plan. Vicky (the Assistant Site Manager) and Derrick (Lead Volunteer) take the fab team out and do all the jobs that are needed on the reserve like fixing/ building hides, cutting vegetation, path maintenance, planting, etc... but sometimes we need a little bit of help from experts!
Last week Oakside Tree Surgery came in and helped us do some tree maintenance.
This is a picture of Philip, who owns the company, cutting a tree that had become unstable due to high winds, therefore for health and safety reasons needed pollarding.
Picture by Keith Bedford (Philip is Keith son!)
If you come and visit you may notice a number of trees have been managed - don't worry we're not trying to get rid of them (trees are important) this is a tree management technique.
On the reserve our tree management are methods called pollarding and coppicing. Pollarding is cutting the trunk several feet about the ground (this was usual done for trees where cattle or other livestock were present, cutting the tree high above the ground prevented livestock from eating all the new shoots). This allows a number of new branches to grow, rather than one trunk, making it bushier. Traditionally the trees would be cut every couple of year for fire wood, or for wood for a variety of uses.
Coppicing is similar the trees are cut close to ground level (traditionally this mothod was used when there was no livestock). After cutting many new shoots will grow, and traditionally the wood could be used.
We sometimes do a combination of pollarding and coppicing (collarding) where the trees are cut at chest height to make it easier for us to manage! We can't go up the tree like Philip in the picture above, we don't have the licences and training, so we bring in the experts!
Here at the reserve we do this tree works for a few reasons - it creates a nice bushy cover for the birds so there is lots of feeding places and shelter, it also prevents the trees from becoming too large and a health and safety risk (in the high winds we don't want the trees falling down), and as we are a wetland reserve the trees aren't too tall to obstruct flight paths (which allows wildfowl and waders to move freely round the reserve).
See you next time,
Lou