The volunteers don’t just care for Winnall Moors they are also responsible for looking after the garden at Bradbury House. In August we tidied around the garden trimming the hedge, weeding the garden and keeping the brambles under control through the small woodland area.

The hedge is planted with Hornbeam, a native tree to Britain, particularly in the south and south east of England where it is relatively common. The word “horn” in its name derives from meaning hard as the wood is very hard and in parts of East Anglia it is still known as “Hardbeam”. Due to the woods hardness it is not used a great deal for timber as it is difficult to work, easily blunting tools however, it has been used for cogs, pulleys and makes for an excellent fire wood as it burns very hot. Hornbeam can be confused with the beech tree, which is also often used in hedging, as both readily keep their leaves in winter and have similar leaves and smooth bark. The leaves of the Hornbeam have more prominent leaf veins and a serrated, rather than smooth leaf edge. 

Hornbeam are also the food plant of several moths including the Common Emerald, one of the UK’s most colourful moths, shown below.

 

Read Full Post »

Green Hay Spreading With Amphibians

During late summer the volunteers were involved in green hay spreading. What is green hay spreading I hear you ask? Basically it is cutting hay from a meadow with lots of wild flowers, and spreading this hay over another meadow which has few wild flowers. The idea is that the seeds from the hay will now grow in the meadow which has few flowers creating a meadow with lots of flowers providing food for insects such as butterflies and bumble bees.

Wild flowers grow better where there are fewer nutrients in the soil, other wise the grasses tend to out compete them. Therefore we cut the grass in the meadow with few flowers and removed the cuttings to take away some nutrients. Then we collected the hay from the meadow with lots of flowers and spread it over the meadow we had just cut. While collecting the hay rich in flowers we disturbed several frogs, a toad and even a young newt that were hiding in the grass.

The above picture is of a frog held by Ray, one of our volunteers, and below is a  toad.

From these photos its not all that easy to tell a frog and toad apart, but there are a few differences you can use. Firstly frogs have smoother shiny skin that appears moist, whereas a toad has bumpy warty skin that is dry to touch. Secondly frogs have noticeably webbed feet and relatively long hind legs that it uses like a coiled spring to hop away when it feels threatened, in contrast toads have little in the way of webs between their toes and have shorter legs that they use to crawl around on however, they can still make a good leap with their hind legs to get away if need be. In my opinion frogs are also that little bit prettier than toads with markings that range in colour from green, deep brown, yellow and even orange. Toads tend to have less patterning over their bodies and are most often brown, but they can also appear quite orange and the one in our picture looks quite yellow.

The young newt we found was a smooth newt, in late summer they leave the pond where they grew as newtlets to live on land where they feed on a wide range of invertebrates, large adults have even been know to eat young slow worms! Its a good sign to find three species of amphibian at Winnall Moors, as they are very sensitive to pollution.

Now as promised in the last blog here is a link to more otter footage from Winnall Moors:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrfkuSTjd4U

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScZp7whWd8c

 

Read Full Post »

Otters at Winnall

Since working with Back to Nature the volunteers have been asking about the wildlife that lives on Winnall Moors. As you’d expect from a Hampshire Wildlife Trust reserve Winnall has lots of plant and animal species however,seeing these animals species can be very difficult. It requires the ability to sit still for long periods, much patience, and finally a good deal of luck. As most of us don’t have time to sit quietly for hours waiting for an otter that may or may not swim by I have been putting out camera traps to get an insight into the wildlife found on the reserve and provide a glimpse into their secret world.

The very first images captured on my camera trap were of an otter, however, it was a fleeting glimpse of its flank and tail. Not quite the image of an otter facing the camera I was hoping for. Here’s a link to the clip on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwdTGN_5fng&feature=youtu.be

The next time I put out the camera trap the results were much better, it arrives on the river bank, has a sniff, marks it’s territory then swims off, here’s the Youtube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClM6s3mMAng&feature=youtu.be

Otters frequently top the list of animals people would most like to see in the UK and it is still very hard to see an otter even though they have made a miraculous recovery from a dramatic decline from the 1950’s to the 1970’s. This decline has been closely linked to the introduction of certain pesticides in the 1950’s that were used in agriculture. These chemicals not only affected otters, but many other animals,  including birds having a disastrous impact on their ability to reproduce. Once we realised how harmful these pesticides were there use was stopped and bird populations recovered relatively quickly, but it took otters many more years.

Much of this of this recovery occurred naturally with otters spreading back into their former range from areas where otters had survived, such as the south west, northern England and Wales. In some areas, in particular south east England, a total of 117 otters were re-introduced between 1983 and 1999. Last year in August otters returned to Kent, the final county in England for them to recolonise.

The interest in the animals, in particular the mammals you can find at Winnall Moors inspired me to run a mammal ID and tracking session with the volunteers at Trinity.

Mammal hides, bones and a stuffed fox.

We started the afternoon in the class room learning about mammals, their habits and signs to look for such tracks and their poo, which can tell a lot about the animals you have living in your area. After learning about the mammals inside it was time to see what signs we could find out on the reserve. We succeeded in finding otter spraints (or otter poo), a Water Vole latrine (more poo) and fox scat (you guessed it, yet more poo). The problem with finding mammals is most of them are shy and nocturnal, only coming out at night when most people are inside. This is one factor in why they have been able to survive in a country like Britain, avoiding people by only coming out when we aren’t!

A volunteer points the way to an otter spraint.

It’s not just Otters that the camera trap has captured, below are links to videos of a Moorhen and Mute Swan recorded in the same spot at Winnall Moors:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVF8ggrVF2k&feature=youtu.be

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ImlYlL0vgo&feature=youtu.be

Next blog will have more otter action on camera as well as updates on what the volunteers have been up to at Winnall Moors.

Read Full Post »