27.11.11 Willow coppicing and Bank stabilisation

Six volunteers, including two new volunteers carried on the work start by a group from HSBC as a partner Keep Wales Tidy Event on the LNR. The two new vols, Becky and Ruth, are work colleagues and the latter came out on the LNR on that HSBC workday.

The plan for today was to coppice a few more willow stools, process all the material for either willow bundles or for living stakes. We improved upon the work from last time by making a simple frame for the bundles to be placed upon, which made it easier to pass the wire underneath the bundles.

Willow being dragged the hard way across to the processing area by Beau (watched closely by Mum).

Ruth cutting the willow to length.

Tricia wiring a bundle.

Staking a bundle into place.

Two bundles staked on top of each other to divert water around a downstream beech tree. The water was already being diverted away from the soft bank so this looks good.

Slideshow.

Cheers to TCBC Countryside Service for continued support, permission and for purchasing the wire for the fascines.

New Ponds and Bank Erosion

Many of you will have noticed that there are a couple of new additions to the local nature reserve in the form of new ponds. Both of these are found on the site at the end of Juniper Crescent and were created as part of the South East Wales Wetlands Project in partnership with Environment Agency Wales and Ponds Conservation. Hopefully, in time they will be naturalised with plantlife (an area heavilly populated by sedges, reeds and alder), by insect life and hopefully for newts and to support more bats.

The ponds appear to be filling quite nicely, but management of Himalayan balsam here may be a problem, so we will have to wait until next summer to find out.

Recently, we did a trial bank stabilisation event with HSBC using coppiced willow into bundles. The good news is that the willow bundles are still there. The problem is that the drain is already fully blocked up and the water back filling again. It seems that this is a big part of the erosion problem. Moreover, it seems that there is a stream leading down to the drain from the oppisite direction to the stream itself and this will eventually undermine the concrete drain itself. We also found an area part the way along the the stream where the bank is being seriously eroded across the path and this is creating a really dangerous crevice. There are several pictures in the following slideshow showing all of these problems.



I met up with Jon the Woodland Ranger back in work after his sabbatical and we talked about some of these issues and we hope to come up with a proactive and reactive plan.

Don't forget the next event is this Sunday (27th Nov) at 10am meeting at the Car Park off Birch Grove performing more bankstabilisation and coppicing.

Willow Coppicing and HSBC saving the banks

Sunday saw 9 volunteers from HSBC in Newport helped to coppice a small area of willow in a corner of the reserve as part of a rescue package for the stream banks.

Firstly, they were given a short health and safety talk followed by tool care and handling. We then walked through the reserve giving the vols a brief description of the Local Nature Reserve's history, habitats, wildlife and conservation issues. One such issue involved the banks of the drains being eroded to such an extent that the most mature trees on the reserve were threatened by bank collapse. One incident has already happened where a large sycamore fell across the stream where its roots where soil around some of its roots were washed away. This was recently cut up by TCBC's Woodland Ranger and vols. However, there are several trees including some magnificent beech trees which are also under threat. The idea for today’s work was to perform some bank stabilisation by making willow bundles which are staked into the bank with living willow, which would hopefully root and decrease future erosion.

The coppicing involved cutting the willow, in clumps called a stool, as close to the ground as possible with saws.

The wood was then taken to the processing area where it was cleaned and cut to length for the fascines, really curly wood was left in a pile for later. Bundles of willow of about 6 foot length were tied using wire into long sausages called fascines.

Meanwhile some willow stakes were made from thicker pieces of cut willow that were not so useful for the fascines. The wood was cut to a spike at one end using billhooks. Nearby, a small group litterpicked the area where we were working and we collected 3 bags of rubbish (throughout the day). We then looked at the drain which was completely blocked with silt (much of this from the eroding bank) although we could hear a trickle somewhere. Dave mainly set to this with a Chillington hoe and some muscle.

We took some nearby logs to make a retaining wall for some of this collected silt and staked these into place. Right next to the drain on the hill, we dug a small hole which formed the base of the amphibian hibernaculum.

Once finished all the useless brash was piled in here and this was filled over with the dug up earth.

Finally, we made 3-fascines altogether and three of us slopped our way across the silty stream and staked the willow fascines into place.

For all of this we used material from just 5 willow stools covering a very small area.

Everyone had a great time and we look forward to the next one. which is pencilled on for Sunday 27th November 2011 at 10.30 am.

What's your favourite plant? - Himalayan balsam

Well, it hammered it down last night and I had a dirty pair of waterproofs, so I reckoned on heading down to the LNR to kill 2-birds with one stone. To my astonishment, both Tricia, Maria and Beau came out to pull up more of our favourite plant, Himalayan balsam.

Speaking of favourites, it is difficult to pull ballsam so much of the time, so we were pleased to be distracted by Beau with her "What's your favourite..." game. So all in all, we pulled a massive area again in 2 hours and learnt alot about each other including T-rex, Bread and The Young Ones.

Beau early on found a giant himalayan balsam at well over 2 meters, but right towards the end Tricia found one which stood over 3 meters tall; what an amazingly adaptable plant. My best find of the day was a milk crate and a football post.

Searching though 2,495 moths on the UK Moths website to find one of the moths we caught on the weekends bug hunt(I started at 1 and eventually found it at number 2,441 [silver y]) has spurned us on to borrow the moth trap on a Friday night in early August to sit down to see what we can catch. This was less enthusiastically approved until food and drink was mentioned. So as soon as we have a date for that it will be on the blog.

Silver y moth (Autographa gamma)

We'll be out next on Thursday evening from 6 pm just passed the burnt oak tree, whatever the weather and it looks like we are approaching the time to bring out the long-handled hooks as very many are in flower now.

03.07.11 Henllys LNR Bug Hunt

Friends of Henllys LNR held a bug hunt to make a start on an audit of the biodiversity on the Local Nature Reserve.

On this perfect sunny day, ten of us grabbed bug hunt nets and viewing containers (kindly loaned to us from TCBC Countryside Section and Greenmeadow Community Farm) and sweep netted the meadow searching to see what invertebrates we may find. All the volunteers went out sweeping while Chris sat at his camping table waiting for all the nets to return so we could photograph what we found. Transfering the catch into the observation container was trickier than we imagined, as was photographing them afterwards.

We were all amazingly suprised with the massive numbers of bugs that we did catch. You do often notice butterflies, bees and other large insects, but the variety in sizes and colours of bugs that we sampled impressed us all. It shows how valuable the meadow is for nature as well as for us.

Dazzlers on the day included the striking 6-spot burnet moth (Top left), a green irredescent mint leaf beetle (Top right), a bright yellow crab spider (Bottom left) and the dark bush cricket with its almost fluorescent green/yellow underside (bottom right).

The bug hunt, albeit great fun and informative as it was, gave us excellent relief from pulling himilayan balsam. However, it also showed us what we are here to protect and enhance. The large amount of seed collected in the nets reminded us that the meadow will be cut in a few weeks time and we will be looking for loads of help in September to rake it off to help further enhance the LNR. With all conservation management, if you get the building blocks of the plants right then everything else should fall into place.



Friends of Henllys LNR is free to join, everyone is welcome and for more information call Chris Partridge on 07717 412 270.