Mrs Brock the Badger

It was more tree felling and pruning along the trail again. The valley that the trail runs along used to be a home to many printworks. Sacks and other items from the Manchester cotton trade would find their way here to have the name of coal merchants or whatever printed on the side. The whole of the valley between the village at one end and the town at the other contained a succession of printworks. Printing required large volumes of water in order to wash away dyes, so in addition to the various factory buildings, there is a string of old "lodges", or small reservoirs. In the passage of time, some buildings have been demolished, others converted into light industrial use. The pools, however, remain, and I have been told contain some interesting stocks of fish. Fishing rights pertain in some of the pools.

Quite a lot of trees have been cleared in the last few weeks. I found myself wondering if a point might be reached when the optimum number of trees are left, and work will focus on other areas.  The construction of the old railway line involved cutting out of rock in some places and banking up in others (obviously!) We were working in an area which was a bank, meaning that on one side the land drops away quite steeply to the valley below where there are a lot of light industrial buildings.  The bank was riddled with animal holes, old and new. One of them was a new one, and one of the wardens working with us today said he had found a dead badger cub in the entrance the previous day. We had a look for it, but there was no sign, so we concluded that Mrs Brock had removed it elsewhere, or possibly eaten it.  It was suggested that it might have been the runt of the litter.  There is a website, http://www.badgerland.co.uk/main.html, which claims that the badger is the most popular British mammal.  I spent quite a bit of time reading this. Badger setts involve a tunnel, with one or many entrances, which lead to a sleeping area. They also have a tunnel which ends in a latrine. Clever! It continues, "A really big sett can have from 50 to 100 or more entrance holes. A sett this big will have been dug out by lots of badgers, over many years. There are some setts which are known to be over a hundred years old. Many generations of badgers have lived in these setts.". So back on our bank, the warden wasn't sure if some of the holes were badgers or rabbits, but they looked quite big to me.  At any rate, this made an interesting diversion. Badgers are heavily protected, so it is illegal to kill a badger unless under an official cull. We were not to work within - 30 metres? - of the sett, in order not to disturb them. 

This week I was acting as lookout, and in clearing away the brush once the tree was down. The chainsaw man cuts the tree into so-called manageable bits, but some of these are quite large branches which are quite heavy. Dragging these through the undergrowth, to put them down the slope was hard work. I asked at one point whether they ever sell firewood. But no, nothing is ever removed. The brush is left to rot. The rationale is to speed up the process of forest ageing and renewal, which encourages biodiversity.

What is interesting to me is how little time is actually spent "in the field". The first hour of the day, the guys sit in the office and catch up with emails and paperwork. Before we go out, the landrover is loaded with equipment. Tools, in particular the chainsaw, need to be sharpened. Then there is travelling time to get to where we are to work. And time whilst everything is set up.  I have noticed that the work proceeds at a steady pace, with frequent breaks to talk to members of the public. But I reckon that the actual work that gets done is no more than about four hours each day. But given that the work is physically demanding, this seems about right. This is one part of the public service that doesn't appear to have targets (number of trees cut? items of equipment maintained?). Thank heavens for that.

A girls' day out: digging holes

The female member of the team, is not, strictly speaking a member of the team, although she shares office space. She reports to the same boss (the Regional Manager) as Mr. Head Ranger, but has a different remit.  Her responsibility is the maintenance of a 60 mile section of the Pennine Bridleway.  I was intrigued to know what this entailed, so asked last week if I might be permitted to spend my volunteer day in her company. My wish was granted.  In short, the remit involves checking different sections of the path for damage, whether it be caused by rain, trail bikes, horses or just general wear and tear. Then repairing, or arranging repair in the case of larger works.

We started the day with a 40 minute drive in the landrover, to a section of the path which crosses some of the high moorland area.  First stop was at a junction of the path, where we needed to put in a way marking post, as the previous one had gone missing. Where to?  Who would want to steal a sign? A puzzle this. So I had a go at digging a post hole. There is a special spade for doing this, that looks rather like a peat cutting tool. It has a long curved blade that allows you to cut a deep, narrow hole without disturbing the surrounding area. This was not easy as the ground is full of stones.  But it was a temporary measure until a proper sign could be installed, so when we encountered a rather solid base of stones about 50 cms down, we decided to call it a day and did not go as deep as an arm's length, which is the usual recommendation. The sign was inserted in the hole, and rocks chocked down the sides of the hole to hold it steady. There is also a snazzy little spirit level which fits round the post and enables you to make sure it is upright.

Job completed, we then set off along the track and came to a couple of places where the drains needed to be cleared to prevent water from getting onto the track. They weren't too bad. Our progress then became quite hair raising in places where the track had eroded quite badly, as a result of the recent rains.  I would like a go at driving the landrover! A note was made to come back and see to the erosion later.  At one point it was necessary to drop down into a nearby housing estate, to access another section of the bridleway further on.  As we came down the hill, we came past some farm buildings and a badly churned up field - mud patch - which was home to several sorry looking horses. They had blankets on, but these were caked with mud. One horse was lying down, and as we passed by tried to get up, but couldn't. We were very concerned and upset by what we saw. I know nothing about horses, but these poor creatures looked in an extreme state of neglect. There was a woman coming out of a nearby barn, so we told her about the sick horse. I suppose another explanation might have been that it was about to give birth.

Eventually we came to a gate, up another part of the track, beyond which was land owned by the Water company as there are several reservoirs in the moors here. The moors are run as grouse moors, and my supervisor for the day explained the delicate relationship between what they do and are responsible for, the water company and the local gamekeeper.  The gamekeeper apparently fits the stereotype of being quite hostile to intruders. At a place where the bridleway goes over a dam we were to erect a finger post. But first we had to remove the old one, which had lost its fingers. We dug down a bit at the base, sawed through a bit, but as this was a bit difficult given the awkward position, my supervisor decided that we would winch it out using the landrover.  So, some new instruction on winch technique, then...pull! It came after a bit of wiggling.  Our efforts were observed by some water company workers, who seemed rather bemused by the fact that two women were not only in charge, but doing the heavy work.  The world is still full of dinosaurs.

Digging a hole for the new post was a lot easier than the previous one, the soil being a nice peaty tilth, with no stones. The job was finished efficiently and with a lot of laughter.  The weather had been cold and overcast, but in spite of this, it was lovely to be in a remote spot in the moors, and have it mainly to ourselves.  A great day out.

Two steps forward, one step back

This last week has seen storms across the country, 140mph winds in Scotland. We were treated to a lesser version of the storms, but the worst of it was about 36 hours of non-stop, heavy rain.  The ground is already sodden from the snow melt and showers off and on since, so this caused some flooding of roads in the district. 

The nature trail, which is the responsibility of the County Council service for which I volunteer my labour, runs for 3 miles along a defunct railway line, between a village and a town.  When we came to this area ten years ago, it was a muddy, litter strewn track, badly overgrown with vegetation on both sides. 

In the interim, the service has overseen some great improvements. About five years ago, some funding was obtained to reconstruct the trail for its entire length, which included some major rebuilding and re-routing at the town end. Outside contractors dug it out, laid proper foundations and applied a top layer of grit. The trees and undergrowth on both sides were trimmed back, and over the intervening years have been thinned, the litter removed, and the whole generally tidied up.  (I should point out here that “tidy” is not a word that the rangers and wardens like to use, as they associate it with gardeners whose obsessive tidiness reduces the places that harbour wildlife.) They dug drainage culverts on either side and laid pipes in various places under the trail to drain away the water to the lower slopes and into the river below.

The recent rainfall was of such volume that at one particular stretch, the drains quickly became clogged with leaves and other detritus, causing the fast flowing water to stream over the trail. It has created several deep gullies where the layers showing the construction of the track have been exposed.  One of the team estimates that it is an outside contract job, it cannot be repaired by the existing team, and that the damage will cost in the region of £230,000. This is at a time when there is no money for anything that the public services provide. A man was sent out with a rake to shift some of the looser material back into the gullies, but this seemed to me to be no more than cosmetic. I asked why we could not all set to with some shovels. But no, the foundation hardcore comes from a specific quarry, the surface grit comes from a limestone supplier 30 miles away and has to be matched to maintain the quality of the surface.  This all involves transport and expertise, plus the cost of the raw materials. I confess I was horrified by this.  The service is always banging on about reducing hazards to the public, yet here they seem content to do nothing until the lengthy process of procuring money, hiring contractors etc is put in place. I will await developments on this and see what happens next week.

My day with the service this week was more treework, but I have noticed that I am now allowed to work more on my own, so the lads must think I am getting the hang of things.  Some of the work was near to a property which shares a boundary with the trail. My task was to use the loppers to clear away the undergrowth near to the man’s fence, so that he can get in and paint it with wood preserver. I was cautioned to proceed carefully here because “last year there was a bullfinch nest in the scrub somewhere”.

Birds nests, parasites and bat boxes

I was greatly excited last week having made my first bird box in the workshop.

We were again working along the trail and in the Bluebell Wood. The task in the morning was to check the boxes that had been put up last year, remove any existing nest material, check which boxes needed repair or removal, and to put up some of the new boxes as replacement.  Three of us worked together, armed with a ladder and some of the new boxes. Where the boxes are past their best, they are removed and broken up, then thrown onto the woodland floor to break down naturally. We put a new box in the place where one had been taken down so that we knew where to put it. Apparently there is a map of all the boxes, all of which are numbered,  so that surveys can be made of bird populations.  But this map was back at base.

Last year's nests have to be cleared because apparently they get full of parasites and other nasties which the birds don't like, so they like to make a new nest each year. I was amazed at the composition of the nests, as well as the usual twigs and bits of moss, there were dog hairs and sheep's wool, and chewed up bits of the felt from tennis balls (used by dogs). All were cleverly woven into a very comfortable and cosy looking nest. The boxes are very effective at keeping the rain out, so they were dry as well. Some nests still had the egg shells in them. I learnt that these were nearly all blue tits' or long-tailed tits' nests.

Some of the boxes in the Bluebell Wood were positioned in the area which is the boggy bit and here some interesting plants are just beginning to grow. The bluebells are starting to poke their heads through the leaf litter. I was walking through the wet bit and saw a flash of bright red. I bent down, thinking it was some litter, but no, it was a beautiful scarlet fungus.  The warden looked at it and said it was an elf cap. A lovely find!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Scarlet_elf_cap_cadnant_dingle.jpg.  There are also some glorious bits of bracket fungi on the larger rotting tree trunks lying on the floor, but I don't know what type they are.

In the afternoon, we revisited the places where we had left new boxes, then we put them into their new places.  This is done by means of threading two lots of gardening wire through fencing staples which had been put in the side of the boxes. The top wire is fixed around a branch on the tree, the bottom wire goes around the trunk.  I felt a sense of achievement when I put the first one up.

The other things I saw were three bat boxes. One had fallen off and needed repairing so I picked it up and looked inside. It is a very simple construction with a tiny opening and not much room inside, but presumably a very handy roost for these tiny creatures. When we were back at base, I asked the Head Ranger about bats. Apparently there are three, maybe four species around here. I have certainly seen some behind our house. Long-eared and pipistrelles are the most common, but we also have natterers and daubenton bats, these last of which roost under bridges and feed over water.  There are some under a local footbridge, so I'll have to go down one night and have a look.