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.

During our very successful inspection of bat roosting and hibernation boxes in the late summer of 2017 we found one hibernation box which was obviously occupied by hornets. The presence of the large insects kept the inspection team a respectful distance away. The presence was noted and plans made to revisit the box in the winter when the cold weather would have killed the occupants.

When we returned many months later in the cold weather we found the insects gone and the box completely full with the nest they had built. It had to be emptied to give bats the opportunity to re-occupy the box. The nest had been constructed in a very skilful way to fill every centimetre of available space inside the box and included an area beneath as they had expanded their colony further. A few dead hornets remained.

The nest was carefully removed and the box cleaned out. Despite being an amazing example of hornet skill and ingenuity it had prevented the box being utilised for its intended purpose to house hibernating bats. We work hard to increase survival prospects for the diminishing number of bat species in our area so are hopeful that next year it is occupied as intended. We have found however that hornets often come back to the same locations on successive years so are slightly apprehensive that the problem might be repeated. We have asked for a volunteer to mount guard on the box next summer to drive any invading hornets away but so far there have been no takers.

 

                                                                            Unwelcome visitors have rendered this hibernation box out-of-action.       

                                                                                         An example of hornet construction skills found within.            

The 2017 summer proved very busy with weekly volunteer activity days. This caused a delay in meeting all seasonal activities and as a result the work normally undertaken at Sayers Common Pond was displaced in our schedule. We attempted to catch up at the end of 2017 and worked into December to achieve it. Due to the steepness of the banks, the high water level and the difficulty in working in the freezing cold water, a small working party was employed rather than advertising weekly general appeals to all volunteers.

The working party achieved a lot but were unable to complete everything hoped for due to the arrival of the seasonal demand to maintain all group owl boxes before the next breeding season. The work at the pond will resume as soon as this is completed.

Brush re-growth around the pond, excessive spread of rushes within it and re-growth of willow from areas previously cleared were some of the tasks addressed. The temperature of the water on some very icy days required increased layers of clothing to be worn beneath waders but even this did not prevent the cold penetrating. Due to the general dampness of the days and the wet cuttings removed all cleared debris proved a problem to burn. The team worked very hard however and much was achieved. With frost and fog in abundance on these days it caused any meal breaks taken to be of much shorter duration than normal. Rarely have volunteers been so eager to get back to work again to warm up.

 

 

                                                               Volunteers brave the cold weather to improve the condition of the woodland pond.