Fencing water vole habitat
Next week, work will begin on fencing part of the tributary stream that runs at the bottom of Village Green.
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Here’s a Good News Story…
..among all the doom and disaster we seem to have inflicted on our home planet.
Continue readingTree planting
We have been making what might seem to our followers like a great fuss about the planting of just a very few disease resistant elm trees. Here are parts of a post from March 2020, which explain what disease our precious saplings are resistant to, and why we are so eager to get them established in the hedge between Cornfield and Sleepers.
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Disease resistant elms
Progress report
by Ian Bushell
On April 10th we checked the fifteen Dutch Elm Disease Resistant trees, donated by Peter Shallcross and Frank Crosier, that we had planted in April 2021.
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Puddle Corner
by Clive Knight
Phil, Frank, Peter White and I have started to clear the grass that has overgrown the edges of the path that cuts out the flooded bit by Puddle Corner. We were surprised to see how far the grass has encroached onto the path. We estimated that clearing both sides has opened up the path by around 80-90cm. We haven’t reached half way but hope to finish next week.
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Planting the scrapes
by Ian Bushell
Today’s work party [the 15th] was all out planting in the mud.
Continue readingChain Saw Gang
Pictures and a message from the Friends at work on Wednesday:
Continue reading “Chain Saw Gang”Woodland camp
There is always a gang of children, sometimes junior schoolers, sometimes older, playing somewhere in Village Green woods. The personnel changes as one by one gang members lose interest in sitting round a damp campfire, drinking mix-up or smoking what somebody sold them as top quality weed. But new arrivals come to fill the empty places and the gang continues.
What have they been up to?Primrose ditch
Behind the picnic place at Fiveways, beyond the hedge, is a deep, deep ditch. The Friends have been clearing this ditch, cutting back the old hedges and haloing the oak trees (nos.5503 to 5507) that stand on the far bank. If you look over the bridge where all the paths meet, you will see where they have been working.
Continue reading “Primrose ditch”Haloing oak trees
Veteran trees
A veteran oak tree is usually somewhere between 200 and 400 years old. These are trees that have local historical significance or that play important roles in a particular biosphere or landscape. In the reserve we have many notable and veteran oak trees, numbered and mapped.
Continue reading “Haloing oak trees”Drains and consequences
Last week, Frank Lamerton and Pete White, both FoSCP volunteers and parkrunners, dug channels to clear the floodwater from the central path between the decorated bridge and the big pond, the first area to flood every winter and the last to drain.
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What a difference a day makes!
After sending yesterday’s pictures of the wetland scrapes in Lambrok Meadow, our in-house photographer Simon Knight went back to the reserve to find all its water features, scrapes, ponds, ditches and streams, full to overflowing. Go carefully out there.
Continue readingSCP-LNR
SOUTHWICK COUNTRY PARK LOCAL NATURE RESERVE
PROJECTS PROGRAMME SUMMARY UPDATE – FOR 2022
Background.
The following programme of actions was taken as an outcome of the review of the park on 27th January 2013 by the Wiltshire Countryside Team and Friends of Southwick Country Park (FoSCP). It is intended that this is a living document: a record of previous projects and tasks conducted and an update of works carried out during 2022, a review of the reserve in general, and suggestions for possible future progress.
Floodwater
The Lambrok is full to overflowing – nice to see after all those weeks of drought but go carefully.
All images taken in the reserve 20.12.2022 by Clive Knight
SET-ASIDE
Some years ago, an area at the top of Kestrel Field was set aside from the rest of the field and its agricultural calendar. The reserve would be unmanageable without the help of our tenant farmer, but we also recognise that the twice yearly grass-cut does damage the habitat of some of our wildlife species.
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Tree felling
by Ian Bushell
Our Tree Officer, Rich Murphy, has been running chainsaw monitoring sessions with Clive, Phil and myself to check our competence to fell trees in the reserve. The reserve belongs to the county and they are the people who pay to insure us.
Continue readingSWCK54
There are two public footpaths that cross the reserve: SWCK53 and SWCK54.
Alan and Sarah, long-term Friends of Southwick Country Park, have been clearing SWCK54 where it exits the reserve through a kissing gate on the north west side of Sleepers and heads to Wingfield. Hard work maintaining a public right of way among the overgrown brambles and nettles – thank you.
Bag it and bin it
To make it easier for you to access the reserve’s litter bins, we have laid flagstones through the muddy approaches that inevitably grow around the bins once the wet winter weather has set in.
Dog faeces on the reserve’s paths are unpleasant and unsightly; in the fields they are a source of infection for the animals that will eat next summer’s hay; everywhere and anywhere, they are a danger to the health of our visitors, their children and their pets. Bag it and bin it, please.
Thank you
NEW SIGNS!
Our Local Nature Reserve status is being celebrated with new signs.
Pictures by Ian Bushell
Backwater
Scrapes 2 and 3 of Wiltshire Wildlife Trust’s ABBA project will be backwaters lying alongside Lambrok Stream. A backwater is essentially a shallow pond connected to a waterway, providing still-water habitat away from the flow and turbulence of the main stream.
Continue readingA new pool
Wiltshire Wildlife Trust’s ABBA project is creating three wetland scrapes in Lambrok Meadow.
Continue reading “A new pool”ABBA
Wiltshire Wildlife Trust is undertaking a 5 year project of “practical action, innovative community and business engagement and high-level strategic planning across the River Biss and its tributaries”. The project is called ABBA: A Better Biss Approach.
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Recovery
Clive Knight’s weekend picture of the heritage orchard shows how quickly it is recovering from the grass fire of August 20th.
Continue readingGCN
At the end of August, Ian checked the pond that we are developing with Wiltshire Wildlife Trust in the hope of attracting great crested newts to the reserve.
(Here are some links to previous posts about the pond’s development: ONE TWO THREE)
Read on for Ian’s report
Southwick Country Park Nature Reserve 