To: The Woodland, Flora & Fauna Group Supporters and other interested parties.

We wrote to our supporters and other interested parties in January appealing for support to help us in the Community Matters Scheme run by Waitrose Supermarket in Burgess Hill where we were one of the beneficiaries. We are as you are aware, a voluntary organisation that charges no fee for membership as we feel countryside issues should include every interested person regardless of income. All our income to support our nature conservation work comes from grants and supporter’s voluntary contributions. This means we seek as many funding opportunities as we can.

We are very pleased to announce that we obtained £275.00 from their Green Token Scheme to support local groups. This is a welcome boost to our funds and we wish to thank all of you who contributed in this way to help us and of course Waitrose Supermarket for providing us with this opportunity.

Our conservation costs are continuous and without the generosity of our supporters and others we would not be able to protect our local countryside and wildlife in the way we do.

Thank you to all who helped us with this funding opportunity.

Michael Nailard.

Chairman.

 Waitrose Supermarket Community Matters Scheme Funding.

The arrival of warmer weather has prompted breeding activities in our local population of common frogs. This has prompted them to travel to find suitable mates to source the next generation of the species. This is a natural event and occurs annually.

 

A Common Frog (Rana temporaria).

This year however, the migration of frogs in one area of our countryside has caused much concern for their welfare. In High Hatch Lane in Hurstpierpoint, the movement of frogs between 3 local ponds has caused many to travel across the lane to reach a pond on the other side. In doing so hundreds have been squashed by passing vehicles leaving a carpet of mutilated bodies on the road surface. One of our supporters named David Waterhouse spotted the carnage being inflicted on their population and contacted Chairman Michael Nailard urgently to seek a remedy to help their plight. We are very grateful to him for his vigilance and prompt action.

 

A few distinguishable carcasses amongst the scores of mutilated frogs killed in the lane.

Michael visited the location to see the problem for himself and witnessed the devastation being caused over a distance of almost 100 metres. Quickly some temporary road signs were constructed and landowner agreement obtained to mount them on the verges outside their properties. They were immediately erected beside the lane so that they would be seen by passing vehicles to warn motorists of the frog presence and to slow down.

 

A hastily created sign being erected to help prevent further deaths.

The landowner of a local Nursery was very co-operative and offered to monitor the period of breeding activity and to advise Michael when the signs could be removed. We cannot remedy the demise of those already killed but hopefully this action will prevent further frog lives being lost.  All wildlife species are precious and we as a group work to help them in an increasingly hostile and shrinking natural environment.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Warning signs were erected at both ends of the 100metre stretch of lane to warn motorists and encourage them to slow down.

Amanda Millar, the local wildlife conservationist is giving an illustrated talk on Monday, April 9th entitled ‘Gardening for Pollinators’. The talk begins at 7.30pm and is to be held in The Club Room, Village Centre, Trinity Road, Hurstpierpoint, BN6 9UY.

 

A busy bee working tirelessly for our benefit.

Amanda dedicates much of her life to helping species of wildlife, especially bats and bees. Imagine living in a desert with barely any food, water or shelter. That is what much of the British countryside is now like for many wild pollinators and their numbers are dropping alarmingly.

 

Encouraging their presence adds both colour and value to our lives. 

In this talk she explains how we can all help assist their survival by simply managing our gardens. The service pollinators provide for mankind is immeasurable. Come and learn how you can support them in this way for the benefit of us all. Entry is free and all are welcome. There is a car park opposite the building.

 

This event follows The Woodland, Flora & Fauna Group’s 2018 AGM which will be held in the same venue at 7.00pm for any supporters who are interested in attending. The activities undertaken in the last year will be reviewed together with other business required under the Group’s Constitution. We appreciate that AGMs aren’t to everyone’s taste so are making each event a totally separate function. We are providing refreshments between to allow plenty of time for the arrival of those who just wish to attend the illustrated talk.

It is our aim to encourage people of all ages with a countryside interest to join our Supporters by signing our Register of Interest. We charge no membership fee as we wish everyone to belong regardless of means. Instead, as our conservation expenses are continuous , we do ask those who can afford it to contribute a little to help in the collection dish as they leave the function. This helps us tremendously.

 

 

The Woodland, Flora & Fauna Group Owl Team completed the group’s barn owl box maintenance during the winter months. It took an extremely long time as we had so much wet weather that selecting dry days between for cleaning, painting and repairing any damage made it very difficult. Due to the diverse locations and the amount of work needed at each site, the number completed on any single day was between 2 and 4. With the amount of equipment that has to be transported over muddy fields to each box it always proves a very gruelling exercise.

 

Ladders, paint, cleaning and repair tools and equipment are transported across muddy fields to each location.

 

Over that period we did however, find a record number of adult barn owls roosting in our boxes with almost all containing barn owl pellets. The barn owls and pellets found indicate that the owls are reliant on the boxes for providing shelter and sanctuary during the winter months. The national statistics indicate that 80% of the species now rely on boxes like ours to survive. We always find occupants in a number of the boxes but this year we found a record 22 roosting barn owls in them across our conservation area.

 

Occupying barn owls usually fly out when they hear our approach such is the sensitivity of their hearing.

 

If the weather conditions are favourable and there is a good supply of prey during the coming summer there is a good chance that this year will be a good one for breeding. We are very hopeful that from the 22 roosting owls found a good number will subsequently choose our boxes to breed in.

 

All disturbed owls fly off into neighbouring trees and return to the boxes once the maintenance has been completed.

 

One bad discovery was that 4 of our boxes had been infiltrated by squirrels. This was the first year we had ever found them in barn owl boxes as they had always restricted themselves to tawny owl boxes previously. We have already described how they have destroyed tawny owl boxes and their presence in these barn owl boxes had already resulted in some damage occurring.  This forced us to subsequently spend £50 on bird friendly squirrel repellent and make lot of return trips to these boxes to repeat the application until we had driven them out. Time will tell whether it has been money and effort well-spent.

 

This box was one containing an unwelcome squirrel intruder which can be seen leaping out to the left of the box.

We have recently undertaken the winter maintenance on all tawny owl boxes erected by our group in woodlands across the local countryside. The majority were installed in 2007 and were initially very successful. Many tawny owls were found roosting in the boxes and benefitting from the shelter provided. Sometimes they were found consuming frogs and other prey captured. Progressively however, these boxes have been monopolised by grey squirrels whose population number has been steadily increasing each year. Once occupied by squirrels the tawny owls never return as squirrels fill the boxes with nesting material and create puddles of urine in the bottom. Not content with driving out the tawny owls from these boxes, they immediately turn the waterproof box providing them with shelter into one with gaping holes in the roof, walls and floor as they senselessly gnaw through the woodwork.

A typical example of a tawny owl box found with holes in its front and side.

Year after year we have been patching their damage and spraying the interiors with bird friendly squirrel repellent in an attempt to encourage the tawny owls back. Both these measures have proved fruitless and every year we have continued patching the boxes and patching the patches of previous years, in an effort to justify the hours of hard work spent creating this conservation initiative.

This year the grey squirrel population has exploded and where we were previously seeing a couple of squirrels in woodland areas we are now seeing up to ten. The increase in their numbers has increased their assaults on our boxes to a degree that it is not practical to continue to attempt to maintain many of them. Reluctantly this winter we have admitted defeat and have removed a large number of boxes from areas where the most damage takes place. We have retained some where the damage is not so severe but have given up trying to combat the increasing plague of squirrels in other locations. The time and expenditure wasted is a further disappointment to the failure of a well-intentioned project to benefit tawny owls.

 

The pile of destroyed boxes removed is becoming steadily bigger as time goes by.