30 Days Wild – Day 23

A day off so went out for a couple of short walks. The first was on the coast at an ex industrial site now long since colonised by nature and lots of it. There were meadow brown, marbled white and my fist small skipper of the year flying over a flowery grassland interspersed with belts of magnificent scrub. I failed to get any pictures of the butterflies but did manage this which is probably a heath sand wasp.

heath sand wasp

Later in the day I went out on the Forest walking round Shatterford area. Lots of stonechat, singing woodlark, one of my favourites, melodic and melancholy, and what may be my last cuckoo of the year. Coming back to the car as the sun was going down the cotton grass was looking very fine indeed.

cotton grass

Although it can get very busy at times the New Forest is a magnificent area, it is not so much that it gets too many visitors, that is a hard judgement to make, but it gets too many who perhaps don’t see it for the wonder it is. There are lots of competing claims of the Forest resources and everyone feels entitled to “Their share”. However I think this is to look at things the wrong way, the Forest is not something to portion out and consume, we should not be using it up. Everyone who uses the Forest has an impact upon it, we all need recognise this and try to make it as small as possible, ideally so small it cannot be noticed, access with responsibility. Obviously the same goes for all our countryside and in fact everywhere we share, but somehow these issues become more obvious in a National Park setting.

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In between weaving

I’ve been meaning to write another blog for a while now, but have been ever so slightly pre-occupied by cutting willow and wreath making, with our decorate a wreath activity turning out to be staggeringly popular! As of today, I’ve made 80 willow wreaths (with a little help from Jim who finished some I’d started off for me) and 72 have been ‘sold’ for a donation, so a huge thank you to every one who has joined in, donated and spread the word. We’ve had some fantastic feed back from both individuals and families and it’s been lovely to weave outside the front of the Centre and chat to people as they head off collecting. We may have to do it this way next year, as it clearly works!

I decided to have a break from making today as the weather has resulted in a quiet day visitor wise, but I have more willow cut and ready to weave into hoops for the rest of the week. I haven’t managed to get many photos of finished wreaths but do have a couple:

Advent wreath by Ida

Wreath by Oliver and his mum

Oliver is one of our Wildlife Tots and, missing our usual wreath making December session, his mum asked if they could make their wreath as well as decorate it. They were very pleased with the finished result!

I haven’t just been standing outside the front of the Centre weaving, although most of my time spent out on the reserve does now involve staring at every willow I come across, looking for nice straight rods to harvest and weave with at a later date.

Here are a stonechat, marsh tit and robin I’ve photographed whilst out and about: 

Stonechat on the edge of the main car park, when the sun was shining!

Marsh tit on the feeder by the Welcome Hut

Robin along the path by Ivy Silt Pond

We’ve also had some really lovely photos sent in by Doug Masson and Phil West. Thank you both very much for sharing them, and sorry for the delay in putting them on the blog!

Chiffchaff by Doug Masson

Goldcrest by Doug Masson

Goldfinch by Doug Masson

Female mallard by Doug Masson

Siskin by Doug Masson

Treecreeper by Doug Masson

Treecreeper by Doug Masson

 

Fallow deer by Phil West

Fallow deer by Phil West

Aside from photographing the wildlife on the reserve, the dewy and frosty mornings we’ve had recently have also provided some good opportunities for taking photos. A few more frosty mornings and a little less rain would be very nice… 

Dewy seed heads on the edge of the lichen heath

Dewy spiders web by the car park

Frosty teasel

Frosty seed heads

Frosty Balm of Gilead

Another wreath has just gone, so tomorrow I think I will be back weaving – definitely not a bad way to spend the day!

Changeable

The last week or so has been very strange, with the arrival of several migrants and further snow.

Spring!

On the migrant front there are now small numbers of sand martin hawking over several of the lakes, the most I have seen together is only six. On Ibsley Water there have been at least 2 little ringed plover, but be warned as there has also been a ringed plover. Other waders in the snow last weekend included a few dunlin and 3 golden plover. A single swallow has been recorded on several days and is perhaps the one reported in North Gorley as well. In the woodland small numbers of chiffchaff are singing and near Tern hide a pair of wheatear have been seen for the last four days. Perhaps the greatest excitement has been the sighting of 2 osprey passing singly overhead in the last week. typically for spring birds, they did not linger.

Other notable sightings have included up to 5 stonechat beside Ibsley Water, this is usually a very scarce species on the reserve, I suspect these are birds that had returned to the open Forest before snow and moved into the valley to escape the worst of the conditions. Two adult little gull have been over Ibsley Water where numbers of Mediterranean gull are increasing and the ring-billed gull is still being seen int he evening roost.

As thought to highlight the confusion of the seasons there have been birds starting to nest and the dawn chorus has gone up a gear. The picture below was taken through my kitchen window and shows blue tits investigating a nestbox in the snow.

The drive to start breeding is not stopped by changeable weather.

 

Dirty Work

Working in a nature reserve sounds great and, to be fair, often is, but it can have a less appealing side too. On Monday night someone had a concerted effort to break into our tool store, they used a disc-cutter to try and cut their way in, both from the side and by cutting off the door hinges. Their efforts failed, the store is connected to an alarm system and they left the scene empty-handed. The only bright sparks present were the ones that set fire to the contents of the store. Luckily the fire burned itself out before it did too much damage, but the burning polypropylene rope and other material managed to coat everything with thick black soot. So after we had got the hinges welded up there remained the filthy job of taking everything out of the store and cleaning it and then washing down the whole of the inside. It took all day and this was with the help of the famous Blashford volunteers in the morning and Emily all afternoon, all in all, I would say it would have taken me at least four days work on my own, except that it had to be done in one go so it would have actually been impossible to do alone. Our tools remain useable, although all with a rather dark patina, what I think is termed “smoke damaged”.

Of course doing this meant that we did not all get out to do work that would actually benefit the reserve, or at least not as much as we would have done. Luckily the volunteer team on Thursday is large enough that we were still able to deploy some people to cut the vegetation in front of Ivy North hide to improve the view and cut part of the sweep meadow.

Incidents like this are very frustrating, diverting resources to doing things that don’t benefit wildlife or visitors and take valuable time away from positive activity. Recent visitors will probably also have seen the caravan dumped in the entrance, something else that will cost money to get removed, hopefully it will go in the next few days.

Meanwhile, out on the reserve there was some wildlife. The great white egret was on Ivy lake for much of the day and the male stonechat was still on the shore of Ibsley Water, just west of the Tern hide. When I was locking up the Tern hide at the end of the afternoon the gull roost already contained about 1500 black-headed gull, about the same number of lesser black-backed gull, about 275 herring gull and at least 7 adult yellow-legged gull.