11th January 2011 ... Weekly Volunteers

Present:
John, Ron, Keith and Martin
Mike delivered some manure.

Activities:
- On South heath, we had two bonfires of the coppiced gorse, from last week.
- Went to the ride between the roller stand and the Ride Junction, NE of the cattle pens.  Here we re-pollarded some of silver birch and also coppiced some of the leggy gorse.
- further along on the nw side of the ride, we cut down a large number of small pine saplings.  We left the brash in situ, as they were pretty small and unobtrusive.
- Late afternoon we went up to the mature heath, and coppiced some of the extremely leggy and damaged gorse there.  We intend to have a number of bonfires on this site, as dragging the brash will be tiring.

Observations:
- Noted that there were quite a few patches of Nail fungus on South Heath, which appear to have matured somewhat from their first sighting on the bird count.  Very odd.

martin

18th January 2011 ... Weekly Volunteers

Present:
John, Ron, Neil, Keith and Martin

Activities:
- We had a bonfire of the pollarding and coppicing brash from last week, North east of the cattle pens.
- We continued pollarding the silver birch in the area, and also some more gorse.  We burnt this brash as well
- The cattle attended the fire for most of the day.
- After lunch we also moved up to Mature Heath, and continued coppicing the over grown gorse there.
- All but one of the bags of Mike's horse manure has now been taken.

To note:
- there are now two piles of birch and one of gorse, near the bonfire.

Observations:
- 12 lesser redpoll flock near tractor shed
- small numbers of fieldfare and redwing

Martin

British White Cows on Old Lodge 2011

Here are some of Keith's photo of our cows.  Two of the photos show them taking an interest in our bonfire work.

They appeared to consider it their personal barbecue, eating silver birch twigs / buds off the fire.  This was not a passing interest, as they were there for most of the fire and goodness knows how long afterwards.  Presumably warmth and nutrients, including licking the ash, were what they were after.

Unlike the ponies, they took no notice of our belongings.

Martin


click to see photos on Picassa

British White Cattle now grazing

Last Friday, 6 cattle were delivered in two trailers.  They appear to have now settled in, with hoof marks all over the reserve.  To note

- Gary will be doing the lookering
- there are notices at both standard entrances
- troughs are not needed and continue to be switched off
- they look fab.  Big pandas.  Lovely black ears
- seen eating twigs, soft rush and bilberry.  Stories of them eating bracken rhysomes elsewhere.  One can hope.

martin

4th January 2011 ... Weekly Volunteers

Present:
Keith, John, Neil, Ron and Martin

Activities:
- Bonfire of the pine brash near Batters Hill.
- Cut down 4 marked Pines in the area, and added the brash to this fire.  The trees were taken down at an easy height. ( Alice has since been and cut up the Poles that were lying on the ground, and may have taken down these stumps?  There are a few logs that may still need stacking up)
- On the Old Lodge Drive, we cut back some straggly Holly, that was beginning to encroach on the road.  The brash was either stuffed into the side of the wood, or moved across to the traditional fire-site the other side of the road.
- Wheeled some of the Gorse logs near the five bar gate, back to the log piles behind the tool store.


Martin

Alan's annotations

Hi,

I have transcribed Alan's annotations from his map of Old Lodge into Google Earth.  ( ie a kmz file)

In principle if you have Google Earth, you should be able to just double click below, to get it


double click to get annotations for google earth

martin

25th November 2010 Bird Count at Old Lodge

Here is the spread sheet of the bird count on 25 November 2010

My PDA had problems, subsequently linked to a microswitch to the back battery cover, and so most of this was done by paper and pencil

Nice to have Woodcock again.

click here for spreadsheet

martin

Bird Count at Old Lodge for 30th December 2010

Below is the spreadsheet for the bird count on 30th December 2010

Unfortunately my pda lost contact with the gps, and so we did the count by paper and pencil.

We had two rare birds for the reserve, namely a Collared Dove and a Lesser Spotted Woodpecker.  The former might be rarer :-)

click here for spreadsheet

We also had a good set of Nail Fungus, which is rather surprisingly late.  Actually the fruiting bodies looked quite young.  So goodness knows what is happening, after all this snow.

Martin

28th December 2010 ... Weekly Volunteers

Present:
John, Ron and Martin

Activities:
- Walked round the reserve to check state after all this bad weather
- Coppiced Gorse just onto South Heath beneath the big Pines by the squeeze gate
- left just after Lunch

Martin

21th December 2010 ... Weekly volunteers

Present:
Martin, Keith and friend Bob

Activities:
- bad weather and bad roads.  Basically abandoned other than for the brave
- cut up firewood in the tractor shed, and took home.

Martin

14th December 2010 ... Weekly Volunteers

Present:
Neil, John and Keith
Martin ill.

Activities:
-  Burnt gorse and pine previously cut east of the bench.
- Coppiced gorse near the small wooden gate onto the old lodge lane, and burnt

Observations:
- Waxwing seen towards Groombridge

martin