April Walks
On Saturday 26 and Sunday 27 April I led a couple of walks for Devon Wildlife Trust and Axe Vale Conservation Society round Bolshayne Fen SSSI and Cottshayne Wood. On Saturday there were 18 of us, and on Sunday, 12, including 5 girls (age 9-12) much assisted by Welly the dog.
In the water meadow the abundant flowering Ladies’ Smock attracted a few male Orange Tips on the Saturday, joined by the odd female on the Sunday. Not the numbers I have seen in previous years but sufficient to indicate the nature of this very traditionally managed meadow. It was owned for many years, until the 1970s, by an old lady who John Walker, the owner since then, describes as milking a cow with one hand and reading a book with the other. We noted the profusion of Hemlock Water Dropwort, Marsh Marigolds, Opposite-leaved Golden Saxifrage, and looked for possible Water Vole holes in the stream bank. This is the watercourse along which DWT and AVDCS, with Natural England and the Environment Agency, are clearing Himalayan Balsam to try and encourage the return of the Water Voles. We were too early for the profusion of Southern Marsh Orchids and the Emperor Dragonfly that patrols the very large pond dug by John 15 years ago.
We then walked along his very diverse hedgerow, noting all the woodland and hedgerow flowering plants and ferns, accompanied only by the occasional Holly Blue and Peacock – and ubiquitous birdsong – and crossed the steep unimproved grassland (with the girls and Welly racing each other to the top) and into the wood.
This 11 ha native woodland was planted with conifers in the 1970s. In the last 10 years, 4 of the 7 blocks of conifers have been clear-felled, or very, very substantially thinned, and the land has been allowed to regenerate naturally. It provides an amazing demonstration of the processes of succession, each area being at a different stage with different soil and degrees of wetness, and surviving natural vegetation. In the first area, not finally cleared of brash until 2001, several thousand trees have sprung from totally bare ground; the tallest is 25 feet high. There are Bluebells beneath, and a further 120 plant species have been recorded. It has been occupied by nesting birds, including Willow Warblers and Marsh Tits, and declared ‘Dormouse paradise’ by Ian Crowe. The second area is heather (Ling and Bell so far), gorse, willow, birch and Sphagnum bog, and a very thickly populated large pond. There was no trace of heather anywhere in 1991 when we bought the wood, and no regeneration of anything except holly and beech. The third area has two more ponds and lots of hazel and ash, and Sphagnum with Marsh Violets and Primroses which have just arrived.
John Walker has done much of the felling and pond-making for me, and I, with the help of my friends, have cleared all the debris. We finished the fourth area in March 2008, but did not explore that because regeneration has not yet had a chance to start. It will be interesting to see how it develops, as this time, at the special request of the goldcrests and firecrest that Steve Waite found there last June, I have left a few conifers.
Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves and caught a little of my enthusiasm and joy, and some, I hope, will return to see (and even help) its continuing progress.