Ousel’s Nest Quarry: Flower Power

Meadow Management, Sunday, 4th September 2022

Ousel’s Nest Quarry Local Nature Reserve, Turton, is a site we have been working at since 2014. The site, which is managed jointly by BCV and The Wildlife Trust, has hedges, trees, ponds and the largest wildflower meadows we have ever worked on, today we are working on one of those meadows.

Species-rich meadows and grasslands have declined by 7.5 million acres (3.03 million hectares) since the 1930’s, only 2% of the meadows that existed at that time exist today and of those 75% are small, fragmented areas. The decline began during World War 2 when 6 million acres were ploughed under to provide food for Britain’s beleaguered population, but after the war that destruction continued as the requirement for housing and industrial development grew. Today these developments still encroach on greenbelt land; only 1% of land in the UK now support species-rich grassland.

Meadows are the cornerstone of our green and pleasant land, an intrinsic part of the UK’s natural and cultural heritage. Meadows provide habitat for wildflowers, bees, butterflies, moths, and many other insects, also spiders, small mammals, birds, reptiles and bats. Meadows can also act as carbon sinks and flood defences.

Wildflower grasslands do have some protection, mostly if they have been designated as a Site of Special Scientific Interest or as a Local Nature Reserve, but many won’t have this level of protection or are not properly managed leaving them at risk of being lost.

While Bolton’s meadows don’t have the range of species as chalk grasslands there’s still plenty we can do to improve what we have. Today we were mowing the grass, now that the flowers have died off, and removing it to the edges of the site. Raking up the mown grass stops the build up of nutrient in the soil, wildflowers thrive in a low nutrient environment while grasses prefer more fertile soils. Mowing also helps to distribute seeds; at the moment the meadows have knapweed, scabious, at least one type of orchid, and yellow rattle to name a few, but we hope to improve this over time. Thanks to all involved and also to the Wildlife Trust collaborating with us on this project.

Other Posts about meadows can be found in the Meadows category.

Rivington: Old King Charcoal

Sunday 31st July 2022 – Charcoal Making

Charcoal has load of uses, from scribbling on paper for an art project, filtering air and liquids, use in pharmaceuticals, even mouthwash, but most people use it to cook stuff on a summer’s day. For 30,000 years charcoal has been used as fuel for cooking. 3000 years ago it was used for smelting metals and glass making; it powered the early years of the industrial revolution until being replaced by coke, which is made from coal but using the same processes as this used to make charcoal. The fuel for charcoal came from coppices, woodland that could be sustainably harvested repeatedly over decades of centuries, but as coal and coke became the preferred fuel charcoal making declined. As charcoal making declined coppice management declined, continuing until more recent times when the value of a coppice to wildlife and conservation was recognised.

Charcoal is made through the magic of smothered combustion. A kiln, there are many kinds, is stacked with wood and then set on fire. At a critical point the kiln is sealed to prevent oxygen getting into the combustion process, hence being smothered. The heat cause the release of volatile gases from the woody fuel maintaining the process. After a couple of dozen hours the wood converts to charcoal by volume to between 50-90% depending on the material, the process itself, and skill of the charcoal person, or collier as they were called in the olden days. The more dense the wood the higher the quality of charcoal.

As mentioned, today charcoal is mostly something people see in their barbecue grill, this has created an industry that has and often still uses wood from illegal logging operations in rainforests across the world putting the survival of endangered species such as the mountain gorilla at risk. The extract below is from Wikipedia’s entry on charcoal which you can find here .

“Recent assessments of charcoal imported to Europe have shown that many charcoal products are produced from tropical wood, often of undeclared origin. In an analysis of barbecue charcoal marketed in Germany, the World Wildlife Fund finds that most products contain tropical wood. As a notable exception, reference is made to barbecue charcoal imports from Namibia, where charcoal is typically produced from surplus biomass resulting from bush encroachment.”

So, if you’re buying charcoal make sure it’s from a sustainable source, and preferably produced locally so as to reduce its carbon footprint. Carting burnt wood thousands of miles just to burn your sausage is a bit extreme and not good for the planet.

However, the charcoal we made on today’s adventure in the woods came from coppicing and woodland management operations at Rivington Terraced Gardens. Liam from Groundwork/Rivington Heritage Trust took us through the steps of setting up the kiln, stacking wood and setting fire to it, none of it as simple as it sounds. Once the fire was well away the kiln was sealed and the magic happened. Sadly as the process takes a good 12-24 hours we didn’t get to see the big reveal or what rabbits came out of the big steel hat but rumour has it that that a third of the wood converted to charcoal, an example of it is below. Many thanks to Jane’s Dad for the piccy.

Thanks to Liam and his team for a brilliant afternoon, and the excellent barbecue, and to Jane for organising. Double sooty thumbs up to all concerned.

The Barlow: Whole Lotta Mud

Ornamental Pond Sunday 10th July 2022

The Barlow Institute was opened in 1909, in Edgworth, for the health and well being of the local community. It was dedicated to the memory of James and Alice Barlow by their children, one of whom was Sir Thomas Barlow, Professor of Clinical Medicine at University College London and the Royal Physician to Queen Victoria, Edward VII, and George V. In 2009 we held one of our residential weekends on the site and over 48 hours cleared blocked drains, cleaned out silted up ponds and installed new drainage near the river. Although the site had huge potential for wildlife we didn’t get to go back to do any further work. Since then The Barlow Institute has been re-branded as The Barlow and they have plans to develop and improve the site. The original 10 acre plot contained an open air swimming pool and a boating lake. In 2021 we returned began work on a new pond on the site of the old boating lake (which is doing really well now), worked on the hedges and dug silt out of the ornamental pond.

Today’s task, as we chose to accept it, was the impossible mission of digging out silt from the Ornamental Pond. The design of the pond makes it a perfect silt trap which is great for water quality further downstream but detracts from its function as a pond long term. As we like ponds to behave like ponds and provide habitat for all manner of beasties we’re having another do at digging it out, and again we chose one of the hottest days of the year to do it on.

The pond has a concrete liner which is a good 2 feet, or 600mm for those who don’t have feet, below the level of the out flow. This means that there was that much silt to dig out and as we don’t have a mechanical digger we had to use volunteer diggers to do the digging. With spades, shovels, buckets and barrows BCV and Barlow volunteers spent the day sweating it out over silt, resulting in more alliteration than you can shake a stick at. The job was tiring and back breaking but by the very welcome end of the day we had dug out half of what nature had deposited there over many years. But still plenty left.

Well done to the diggers, barrowers, bucket passers, mud dumpers and shovel scrapers for giving it all your muddin’.
And happy birthday James.

Don’t forget to check the Wild things page to see the new photos.

Firwood Fold: Balsam Apocalypse

Balsam bashing Sunday 26th June 2022

Balsam bashing. Words that send dread and fear through the souls of conservationists everywhere. The yearly exercise of ripping up Himalayan balsam, the persistent invasive that never goes away, can be soul destroying. But should be pack up our weed whackers and let the balsam win? No. Balsam may be here but it doesn’t mean it is here to stay.

Over the last few years we have been bashing the balsam at Firwood Fold and we are now seeing the results of all that work. Compared to last year the area covered by balsam has significantly reduced, so much so that we had to think of something else to do in the afternoon. So, what is the story of balsam. The plant with the pretty pink flowers was introduced to the UK in 1839 by the Victorians as a decorative garden plant. And like many of the Victorian’s favourite exotic plans soon went on the rampage across the countryside’s water ways. Balsam creates dense stands that out compete native species, in winter it dies off leaving riverbanks and the shores of water bodies exposed to erosion. It also interferes with fish spawning areas. There are some plant experts who dispute the negative aspects of balsam and think we should just live with it. Generally though, besides the Victorians. the only creatures that likes it are bees.

Last year we did this exercise in August when many of the plants were in flower, this year we got here a bit earlier and with the exception of a handful of pink blooms the balsam was in bare naked. So, we gave it a good thrashing and left no stalk unbashed. Hopefully next year there will be even less or none at all.

With Firwood being the home ground of Bolton Green Umbrella’s organisers Barb and Trevor Hackett it seems appropriate to mention that Green Umbrella has been awarded a Bolton at Home Stars of the Community award, this link for more info.

Moses Gate CP: Wildfest Garden

Annual Tidy Up 29th May 2022

The Wildfest/Educational/Wildlife Garden is located opposite the bird hide at Moses Gate Country Park. The garden contains a pond, fruit trees, planters and long and winding path all of which had been left to go wild for several years until Bolton Council gave us the site to manage for our own use. Since then we have add a strawberry bed, sensory garden, willow hurdles, wild flower meadow, and laid the hedge. The garden became one of our flagship sites and the location for our Wildfest events, the last of which was in August 2019. It is also used several times a week by Rick in his educational sessions with local schools.

The problem with wildlife gardens is that they tend to go wild and overgrown, which usually isn’t a bad thing but when a site is being used for a educational purposes some management is required to bring things back under control. So, every year we have a tidy up and restore order to nature’s chaos, essentially this is gardening and involves the same procedures as gardening: digging up weeds, planting new flowers, cutting back trees and hedges, and clearing paths, all with the help of BCV volunteers, Rock Hall volunteers and local families.

The weeds and unwanted vegetation were composted, the willow stems were put to one side for use in Rick’s willow weaving sessions with schools, and the more random bits of branch were used to make a linear habitat pile near one of the hedges.

Bird-cherry Ermine larvae sack made from their silk.

Being a wildlife garden we did come across plenty of wildlife including, newts, toads,and damselfies. Our habitat pile will provide habitat for birds and small mammals, the flowers in the planters and meadow will benefit pollinators, and the de-shaded pond will support more amphibians and invertebrates. One interesting and unusual things we came across were trees covered in silk. One of the trees had a large sack of grubs hanging between two of its branches, the culprits were bird-cherry ermine moth larvae. These larvae produce the silk which they use for protection and cluster in large nests prior to pupation. The moth itself is white with 5 lines of black dots on the underwing with the appearance of being covered in fur. The infestation doesn’t damage the tree but can reduce its growth rate.

Thanks to everyone for today’s great work.

Doffcocker: Tern Of The Seasons

Tern Raft Building May 2022

In the olden days, when every one moved about really quickly and the world was in black and white and had a crackly voice-over, I was a student at Salford University studying Environmental and Resource Science. Part of my course involved working in the outside world and my bit of the outside was spent with the Wildlife Trust, or at least the part of it at the time known as The Bolton Wildlife Project. Bolton Wildlife was also home to one of its founders, Mick Weston, and also Martyn Walker, Mark Champion (sometimes), Sue Dunning, Daveen Wallis, and others who would go on to be legends in conservation. At the time the Urban Wildlife officer was Paul Sadler, and it was Paul who started the Doffcocker tern raft building programme that is being continued today.

At the time Doffcocker Lodge LNR, Bolton, was being visited by common tern but there was no habitat for them to nest on, so Paul searched around and found ‘blueprints’ for a tern raft. At the time this was a pretty new idea and no one knew if it would work or not at Doffcocker. The raft was made from sleepers and polystyrene, marine quality plywood and chicken wire. Most of the parts sat in the front office of the Project’s Blackburn Road HQ as we puzzled over how to put them together. The pieces looked like a giant game of Jenga. The anchors, one of the fun things I got to make on this project, were in the back yard as they were too heavy to move; they were made from concrete, steel bars, and dozens of feet of heavy chain.

Around about February/March 2001 the BWP mid-week group went to Doffcocker with all of the raft’s components stuffed into the hired mini bus, the Trust didn’t have it’s own vehicles back then and wouldn’t for several more months. Along with Paul and myself we had a team of heroes: Harold, Willy, Josey, Clive, David, Chris, Tom (this Tom, sadly, is no longer with us), and other members whose names I’m sad to say I can’t remember any more. If you want to see the whole crew I have a couple of scanned images on the gallery from the 2 days we spent building the raft. Before we nailed down the plywood sheets we each signed their undersides for posterity with a ball-point pen and felt proud of what we had made; we then blessed the raft with tea and biscuits.

Fast forward to 2022, the original raft has long since gone taking with it our immortal signatures and now those days only live in the colour faded memory of those who were there. But there are new memories to be made and new things to replace the old. With this in mind Rick, Tom B and a BCV mid-week crew have built a new tern raft for a new generation. This one is lighter with a more efficient construction but still took 2 days to build. Some things don’t change. Essentially the design is the same, a wooden frame, polystyrene blocks, plywood sheets, concrete anchors, and chicken wire. Paul T’s photos in the gallery show the process in detail. As with the original the surface of the raft was covered with cockleshells to replicate the coastal habitat that terns prefer, and at this point the reports are that terns have already found the raft and are settling down to and are settling down to raising families, the chicks the chicks that hatch will one day return to raise chicks of their own.

Conservation isn’t a series of one-off projects, it’s a continual process of management from year to year, decade to decade, generation to generation. Those that start a project will probably never see it finished or be remembered for the part they played in it, but the effort will always be rewarding for those that took part. Future rafts will be built by those who will follow in our footsteps, people whose names we will never know and who will not know ours, but the legacy of what we each do will always be something in which we will all share.