Wow! What a lovely day we ended up with on Sunday morning. We weren’t expecting so much sunshine and so many volunteers. We also had the ‘A’ board out to show where we were, with a handful of leaflets on the top for people to pick up!

First of all we started on the west of the Reservoir Basin coppicing s few shrubs as part of the Scrub Management Plan, then  headed east to the far side of the New Meadow to clear the very large amount of brash that our contractor Don had made when taking a chain-saw to the trees there to increase the light on the tansy plants, and hopefully the beetles.

In all we had a dozen people on site and so actually managed to shift most of the wood apart from the heaviest logs. Most of the light brash went on our bramble pile on dry ground, whilst the long logs have been stacked ready to make a ‘stumpery’ or invertebrate home in due course. If anyone fancies some firewood please leave those piles alone! Our beetles come first.

Amongst the helpers were Tim, who looks after the Scarborough wetlands, but had made a trip over from Stamford Bridge. Thanks Tim! Ron’s family did a great job and we hope Ella like the fox skull and bones we found. Thanks also to Tom and Caroline who joined us for the first time. As the saying goes – ‘many hands make light work’, and they certainly did this lovely Sunday morning!

We also had a visit from the local Police team who had been aware of someone setting traps for foxes on the site, so we were able to do introductions and show them where they had been set.

Thanks to everyone who turned out, and those who weren’t well enough but would have! Next diary date is the 2nd March 2014, although with all the brash we have to clear and planting to do we may have to slot in another one or two…

Work Party 2 Feb 2014

Tom at work 2 February 2014