A little bit of weeding

This week the task was to deal with yet another invasive species, Himalayan Balsam. It is found especially on riverbanks and in waste ground. Himalayan balsam tolerates low light levels and also shades out other vegetation, so gradually reducing habitats by killing off other plants. It covers about 10% of the 30 hectare riverside site. 

As we walked round, Mr Warden explained the strategy for the site, which is to try to encourage the growth of native woodland flora.  In the past two years, my co-workers have been experimenting with different ways of getting rid of Himalayan Balsam. Today, we were doing some simple weeding, but in previous years they have raked and strimmed. Weeding is easy as the balsam has a very shallow root cluster and now is the right time to do weeding before they flower. Conveniently, flowering occurs late when it many of the other vegetation is dying down in the autumn. At this time the plants can be cut down or strimmed without damage to other plants, but this must be done before the seed pods ripen and disperse the seeds explosively. Each plant can produce up to 800 seeds. These are dispersed widely as the ripe seedpods shoot their seeds up to 7m away.

The plants we were pulling out today varied in height from 30cm to 80cm. In some places, it was 100% cover with balsam, in others it was mixed in with nettles, brambles, ash and hazel seedlings, forget-me-nots, campions and grasses.  Where the balsam was small we left some of these areas untouched, so that we didn’t damage the other species growing. Patches which had been attacked last year were showing new growth of other kinds of plants. In a day, we managed to make some good inroads into removing a lot of balsam

It was cool but steamy weather and the many birds were in good voice,  busy about us collecting food for their young.  The woodland floor, where the vegetation is sparse, is a wonderful heady-smelling mulch of leaf mould, full of insects and creepy crawlies which the birds love. The bright, fresh greenery at this time of year is so wonderful, I think “luscious” is a good word to describe it. The hawthorn and May blossom are at their fullest extent.

As a postscript, Mr Warden told me that the balsam is an edible plant. I looked it up on the Net. There are quite a few websites which provide recipes for its use in salads, jam and syrup making. Apparently the seeds taste a bit like hazel nuts.

Why I am not a road mender

Last week, back at the Countryside Service, I did the hardest physical day’s work that I can remember. Suffice it to say, I could barely walk home at the end of it. I now understand why road menders spend so much time standing about. Firstly, in some tasks because of physical space constraints, only one person can be working. Secondly because it is such hard work you need frequent rests.

Our base is situated in a car park. Along one side of the car park is a fenced off path, which strictly speaking is a stretch of the Pennine Bridleway. Some of this fencing was in need of repair, a repair which involved the replacement of four fence posts and some of the horizontal rails between them.  The reason it was such hard graft was that holes for the new posts had to be dug through tarmac and concrete to a depth of 68cm. The tools we had at our disposal were: A wacker (a small pneumatic drill); a shove-hole (a large, heavy tool that looks like an apple corer when it is closed, but works like tongs with shovels on the end, which scoop up the earth); a crowbar; spades; a tin cup (for getting the earth out of the hole when it becomes too deep for the shove-hole); a tape measure; a spirit-level for posts; materials for making concrete; a wheelbarrow.  I took my turn with each of these tools, including the pneumatic drill. This was much easier to work with than I had envisaged, but I can understand why operators who use these things all the time end up with “vibration white finger”.

The work was slow. It took us all day to dig the four holes, but of course quite quick to cement in the posts. I enjoyed making the concrete in the wheelbarrow. This was something my father showed me how to do many moons ago, so I know the recipe (roughly) in terms of proportion of grit to sand to cement and water.  I’m glad that we don’t do this sort of thing every week, as I think my enthusiasm for volunteering might dissipate quite quickly.

By way of light relief, the next day I went out to do another bird survey. This was much the same as the last, but because we were early, there seemed to be more activity.  The highlight though, that made it all worthwhile, was that the warden could hear some juvenile long-tailed tits. The chirping was coming from a nearby tree which he searched with his binoculars. Eventually he spotted nine baby long-tailed tits huddled together on a branch, high up. I looked at them through the binoculars and was delighted to see them. They were so cute! We stood for several minutes watching the mother bird flying in and feeding them.  We both cursed the fact that neither of us had a camera – it would have made the wildlife picture of the year.

The amateur naturalist at work

As I stated in the last entry, spring is the best time to be in Greece. The agricultural countryside around us is a picture of bright green wheat fields, dusky green olive groves, in contrast with newly ploughed red soil and a scattering of red-tiled roofs. The spaces in between abound with wild flowers on waste ground and reedy wetlands.

We had a trip out to one of our favourite places this week. Chalkidiki consists of three legs of land, our home is on the first, but our favourite trip is to the second leg known as Sithonia. There is a bay that we visit which has strange conglomerations of weathered rocks and some small islands near to the shore. It is a favourite with visitors in the summer, and a great place to swim, but at this time of year it is possible to walk around the bay and along a headland among a blaze of flowers. I was a bad citizen of the world, as I collected a number of wildflowers on our walk for purposes of identification. But I only collected one sample from where there were many. 

Returning home I consulted my field guide, but as I soon discovered, identification is not quick or easy. A degree in botany might be a good start! First you have to answer a number of questions such as, does the plant have a green pigment, does it grow in water or on land, are flowers inconspicuous or obvious, how many petals do they have, how are these arranged, etc etc. Eventually you are directed to the appropriate part of the book, where, if you have answered the questions correctly (understanding the terminology helps!) you might find out what you are looking at.  Not being the most patient of people, I found this quite difficult. However, I was able to identify a bright yellow daisy which was a corn marigold; some chamomile and mustard; a lovely little pale mauve flower that I found growing in a cluster close to the ground which to my surprise was a kind of willowherb, marsh willowherb probably; some common storksbill (blue), another pale pink delicate flower on a spindly stalk, I reckon this was pale flax; a tassel hyacinth (blue – like grape hyacinths, but a different shape) and a blue pea-like flower which grows in abundance called a hedysarum.  There were also huge numbers of poppies, both the scarlet common variety and a red horned poppy. Greece does a nice line in thistles too. There are 5 pages of my field guide devoted to thistles, and I estimate that our part of Greece has a fair number of them, from tiny, delicate little varieties, to 1.5 metre giants. If any of my readers are botanists, they might like to tell me whether any of the above flowers are unusual.

I didn’t have much to say about birds in my previous entry. The swallows always arrive in numbers, usually at the end of March. I was lucky the other day to encounter a group of three just sitting on a low telephone wire. They were preening themselves and quite unpeturbed as I walked past. It was good to see them close up as my eyesight is not what it used to be and I don’t like using binoculars. The reddish-brown markings on these birds are very striking. There are also lots of martins and collared doves. We had one trying to make a nest last year on top of the air conditioning unit. I saw the dove’s head poking out and its little beady eye looking at me. I was thrilled as I envisaged a family of collared doves.  But I returned to UK before my beloved, and as soon as I had departed he set to with a broom and dismantled the nest. Rotten spoilsport!

Another aspect of wildlife which flourishes in Greece is the frog population. At this time of year there is a cacophony of chattering from drainage ditches and the reed beds. In any pond it is possible to see lots of the little critters leaping about. They stop their noise as you approach, but if you stand quietly, they start up again fairly quickly.

Our time here is nearly up. We return to the UK and I will find out what my colleagues at the Countryside Service have been up to in my absence.