Hi all, it’s Bailey again. This time I wanted to take some time to talk about some of the work that has been going on at both The Lodge and Fowlmere, in particular the work that our volunteers have been getting involved with. Our volunteers, as always, have been giving up their time to help us make a real difference.
With spring on its way, and birds start to think about courtship and nesting, we are trying to get as much work done as possible. Once birds start to look for a suitable nest site, we have to cease much of our more disruptive work. Things like brush cutting, tree felling and scrub clearance can be very off-putting for breeding birds, and it might mean the difference between them nesting on site or them flying off to look elsewhere. This is why most of our disruptive work goes on during winter, as we don’t have to worry about breeding birds. Lots of this is the kind of work that our volunteers get stuck in with. Over the course of my time here, our wardens and volunteers have made a real noticeable difference to both The Lodge and Fowlmere.
Here at The Lodge, our work parties have helped to clear out large areas of birch saplings across our heaths. This helps to reduce the heather’s competition for sunlight and nutrients. It also opens up patches of bare ground, which can be really good places for things such as woodlark and lots of species of invertebrates. We do leave some saplings and trees in our heathlands however, as these can be great perches for birds. Having a few lone trees gives birds great vantage points over the relatively flat heaths, either for hunting or for projecting their mating calls over a larger area.
Without the help of our work parties, we would not have been able to get as much of this done as we have. They have also been working hard to remove all of these saplings after they have been pulled up. We use bonfires to deal with the masses of saplings, which may seem a tad unnecessary, but is actually a great way of helping out heathland regeneration. If we were to leave the saplings in piles, this would encourage bracken and brambles to grow on and around the piles, which would put pressure on our heather. By burning the removed saplings, it takes some of that pressure away from the heather, and prevents the lodge from being peppered with more bramble and bracken strongholds.
In other areas of The Lodge, and particularly at Fowlmere, our wardens and volunteers have been helping to open up our woodlands. If there are too many trees growing too close to each other, then they start to put more energy into growing taller. This is their way of trying to get access to as much sunlight as possible, which they need to grow and survive. After a while, this leads to woodlands with lots of closely knit, skinny trees with the majority of branches at the top. On their own, trees like this are not necessarily a bad thing, but when they are all grouped together, they are not offering much in the way of habitat for birds and insects. What is better is when trees grow more outwards, with nice bushy branches all the way up its trunk. What you also find when there are mostly tall, skinny trees is that the create a very thick blanket canopy, which lets very little light reach the ground. This means that lots of woods can often quite bare ground with very little growing.
What we do to help improve this is by cutting down a number of trees in our woodlands, we can open up the canopy and let light reach the ground. When we do fell trees, we make sure that the trees we cut are not all the same size. We try and encourage the woodland to have a range of trees, all in various sizes, shapes and ages. This creates habitat for lots of different species. It also means that when the older trees die, there will be other trees of a similar size ready to compensate. Having a mosaic of a habitat is perfect, and makes said habitat much more resilient to change. Without our volunteers, work like this would be much harder to complete effectively.
Our volunteers give up lots of their free time to come and help us make a real difference on our reserves. Their effort and dedication are greatly appreciated, and our reserves would not be what they are without them.
We look forward to seeing you at The Lodge or Fowlmere soon.