This Sunday 9th April (10-12am) there is another working party at the Beryl Harvey Conservation Field. This is a really worthwhile cause and a good excuse to get out in the fresh air this weekend. The field is located next to the football fields and the allotments. Children are welcome, but sorry no dogs are allowed.
See the note below from Julia Reed, who is organising the working party.
Hi Everyone
Just a quick reminder that we have our usual monthly task at BHF this Sunday 9th April. The woodland flowers are beginning to look lovely, with wood anemones, celandine, primroses and the bluebells are starting to flower in the woods, but not showing any colour yet in the field.
There is an incredible difference between the fenced patches of field and the grass & flowers in the rest of the field, showing how much damage the rabbits do, particularly to certain plants, so this task we are going to try and fence some more areas to see what flowers we can encourage . The cowslips are particularly suffering & we already know that Ox Eye daisies have failed to establish due to rabbits.
We are also going to fence around the new willow tunnel, started last month , as the rabbits have started on that. Alongside the usual tasks we will also try & get through the brambles to clear around the entrance to the artificial badger sett, which was constructed using spoil from the pond, to see if we can encourage use of that . A new artificial sett has just been created on the Berkeley homes site as they discovered one ( not currently in use) in the woodland they have sadly cleared.
We also had a lot of frogspawn in the pond this year and a moorhen is nesting again.
Theo of NaturdayZ made a successful presentation to the Parish Council in March & we have had preliminary discussions this evening about the possibility of having an open day at the field, with him offering some activities, to publicise the field and encourage it’s use by the local community including local children. He will then hopefully offer a monthly activity morning to local children. It would be wonderful to see more children learning about nature and enjoying being outside and making good use of the field.
Best wishes,
Julia.
