A light work morning this time – a general tidy-up and a walk round to plan future care of the woodland and meadows. Wellies or similar would be advisable.
Meet at 10.00 am at the Shire Way gate – please ring Paul Hulbert on 01454 315851 or 07771 562505 if you would like more details.
As usual at this time of year there is a wide variety of flowers at Wapley, particularly in the Lower Meadow. Make the most of them now, because the meadow will have to be cut in mid-July.
An insect lands on this ox-eye daisy
Another insect comes in to land on this cornflower-like black knapweed – look carefully just to the right of the flower. You can only see its body – the wings are a blur.
I couldn’t resist this little scene I snapped at Wapley this evening. I’m not sure who was more startled, the rabbit or the robin.
It’s going to be a good year for fungi, I think. These monster bracket fungi appeared recently and seem to be lasting.
You can see that they’re quite thick and fleshy. To give you an idea of the scale, the larger one is about 40cm x 30 cm – larger than a dinner plate.
The skin underneath appears fairly smooth – there are no gills.
When you look more closely you find that the under surface consists of small pores from which the spores are released.
In contrast the upper surface has a sort of spotted, “furry” pattern.
If you want to see these fungi for yourself, they’re in the fringe of the main wood, off the upper part of the lower path, some way down from where the upper and lower paths join.
On the work morning we were exploring the meadows with flora expert Rupert Higgins, who is carrying out a detailed survey for us.
The Lower Meadow is of course the better of the two. It’s of Site of Special Scientific Interest standard, but places are only designated as SSSIs nowadays if they are under threat, which Wapley certainly isn’t.
The plants in the different areas vary according to soil and drainage. Here you can see St Mary’s Church in Yate in the distance.
Thanks to Rupert for a very interesting morning. Our next work morning will be on Sunday July 8th, when we will doing some general tidying up and gathering information for future management plans and projects.
Please come and help our wildflower survey on Sunday 13 May, or just visit and enjoy the splendid display of flowers in the meadows and the woods.
We’re meeting at the Shire Way gate at 10.00 am.
Well, I think that spring has well and truly sprung. A week ago I spotted the first couple of blubells at Wapley – the real English ones, not the Spanish ones that you usually see in gardens.
And the rooks were doing what all birds do at this time of year…
A “team photo” in the Upper Meadow.
Last week we had a great walk with the Walking to Health group. On a lovely sunny morning Tim and I took nearly 40 people on a tour of the Nature Reserve. We told them about the territorial rivalry between the rooks in the wood and the buzzards that nest down the lane.
While we were walking across the Common, someone spotted one buzzard, then a second one. A scouting rook flew across, but the buzzards took no notice. Then a dozen or so rooks took off and started to mob the buzzards.
Although there was no physical contact, at one point a buzzard had four rooks within two feet of it. The buzzard looked extremely worried.
Eventually the buzzards decided that discretion was the better part of valour and flew back to their side of the boundary.
It was amazing that this happened just on cue, and someone remarked that TV cameramen could wait for weeks to film something like that.
Click here for the map and details of our walk, and the things you can look for at this time of year
We’ll keep you posted about future walks at Wapley, but you can find out more about Walking to Health by clicking here, and their programme of walks by clicking here.
Tim explains the species in the Western Wood
A lot of the ash trees in the Centenary Wood have self-seeded. Soome of the “seedlings” are twelve or more feet high! Instead of trying to get rid of the extra trees, we’ve coppiced them, cutting them off four inches or so above the ground. That way they will shoot again from the bottom and provide an understory of growth, while reducing the competition for the larger trees.
Malcolm hard at work with a bowsaw
Dave using his croppers
“And this is only half of what we cut!”
Dave and Paul taking a well-earned break
We stacked the cut wood in large piles, to act as habitat and gradually rot down. This was the way people used to gather firewood from common land – coppicing is a renewable resource, “cut and come again”.
Meanwhile Tim, Mary and Val were hard at work litter-picking.
