Help is always much appreciated at our Winterbourne Down reserve and over the past month volunteers have been getting their hands dirty assisting the team with some vital habitat creation and management work. Having recently started an internship with the Wiltshire team, I have had the pleasure of coming along and helping on a few of these events and thought I would share my experiences of what the work involved.
During October there were various days dedicated to the Save our Magnificent Meadows project, where specialist chalk grassland seed species need to be hand planted across the reserve. This is important as during the conversion of the arable farmland to chalk grassland many specialist species initially get left out due to various factors. Mainly due to the fact that you cannot buy them directly from seed suppliers as unlike more general species, they are difficult to grow and collect in large numbers. Therefore the Save our Magnificent Meadows project has allowed the reserve to obtain seeds for plants that are currently missing from the landscape at the site. Many of these plants require bare soil in order to grow and prefer to be on slightly sloping ground, therefore mechanical seed scattering would not be suitable and so they must be hand planted - so this is where the hard labour begins!
The day that I went to help out was the 31st of October and the weather was gorgeous for this time of year - we were happily strolling around in just our t-shirts! It was also the first opportunity I had had since starting my internship to actually walk around the reserve and take in the wonderful sights and sounds of the wildlife around. The first field that we were to start planting on was a field that was full of sheep getting on with their daily business and looking at us in slight confusion.
The work involved using a hand mattock to remove grass from a small (A4 sized) patch of ground to reveal bare ground. Seeds were then scattered in this patch and compressed into the soil. We did this in selected areas along the sloped section of the field in clusters of around 15 patches. The idea behind this is so that when the plants are established, pollination will be easier as hopefully plants will be relatively close to each other, aiding their long term success. This was hard work and a coffee and lunch break back to the office was well deserved. After lunch we repeated this in another field, where I got my first glimpse of Stone-curlews in flight! As we walked towards the sloped section of this field, the (at this point invisible) Stone-curlews must have heard us coming and seven took off from the adjoining field and landed in a further field. Normally the birds will head south to their warm winter holiday homes in Africa around September-October time, but it appears that this year Stone-curlews have stayed longer in the UK due to the mild autumn weather we’ve had. This made all the hard work even more worthwhile for me as I had accepted that I would not be seeing any of this quirky little bird in person, due to my internship being during the winter migration season - But here were seven right before my eyes!
During November I also took part in the annual Coppicing work party, where every year a different section of woodland on the farm is cut. This involved a group of volunteers, some with experience in coppicing and others (like me) who had never done it before. Coppicing is done here to keep the area open and prevent trees from becoming too big and dense. This adds structural and wildlife diversity and within minutes of reaching the site we saw two hares bounding around! The work involves cutting trees at an angle as close to the base as possible, this does not kill the tree but allows re-growth to sprout from the cut point.
Once it re-grows this creates a short open scrubby area rather than tall dense woodland, which fits in better with the rest of the chalk grassland on the site.
We were using hand saws and clippers to do this, which I found much easier than expected to begin with, as I am no sawing expert! But soon realised there was a limit to the size of trunk that I could handle. With most trees taking me a few minutes to gracefully bring down, I then got over ambitious and attempted my biggest trunk yet – which took me a good 20 minutes to work my way through, but with some help it came down eventually. At lunch time we admired our work and had mince pies around a lovely roaring bonfire. It was already really noticeable the effect that we had had on the landscape in such a short time and by the end of the day we were all pretty impressed with our efforts and how open the woodland now looked, from just one day’s work!
Although hard work, both days I have spent working on the reserve have been thoroughly enjoyable and I have met some lovely people and seen some great wildlife along the way. I would recommend getting involved to anyone who enjoys the outdoors, doesn’t mind a little bit of hard work but who wants to make a positive impact on the local environment! Keep an eye out for more volunteering days in the New Year!
Blog and photos by Abi Rose.
Keeley