Archive for the :: Wildlife Category

Our annual early February bird walk always has a title with a cold theme because we hope that it will coincide with a period of extreme cold and possibly snow which will bring  unusual species to the Park. In the past we have often been disappointed with the weather, but not this year. At 8am a group of hardy souls met in the car park and it was cold, very cold, a terrifying Arctic minus seven! 

We set off on our walk with lots of extra layers of clothing, gloves, hats etc. with hopes of some unusual sightings. We were not to be disappointed and the group was soon admiring a bittern that was catching the early morning sun along the edge of Stewartby Lake. In past years during extreme cold weather up to six of these rare herons have been seen around Stewartby Lake. (Last year Neil Wright helped the bitterns survive by supplementary feeding with sprats). Paul Wright then identified a little gull which flew from Stewartby Lake to the sewage works where it fed with a couple of hundred black-headed gulls. Little gulls are very unusual in winter in Bedfordshire, more usually seen during the spring and autumn migrations.

We needed to keep moving to keep warm and started to make our way to the Pillinge in the wetlands. On the way we saw a number of species including fieldfare, redwing and chaffinch although small birds were difficult to find, probably because the cold conditions had sent them all to our garden feeders.

The pillinge had a good variety of grebe, gull and duck species on it: pochard, wigeon, tufted, mallard, teal as well as herons, cormorants and coots. I counted twenty-four moorhens which had been frozen out of their normal reedbed habitat. What we were looking for were two species that had been first recorded earlier in the week. Tony somehow managed to find the first; a female common scoter which was fast asleep. This is a drab grey looking bird with off white cheek patches which should have been bobbing up and down somewhere around the coast. The second was just as difficult as they spend most of the time diving for food. Three female smew had arrived on site about the same time as the scoter. They belong to the sawbill family; the bill has a small hook at the tip and teeth along the sides which gives a better grip of their fish prey. The females are very smart birds with grey upper parts, a red brown head and brilliant white cheeks.

Breakfast was beckoning so we made our way back to the Forest Centre. On the way we flushed a woodcock and had some good views of snipe which again had been forced out by the cold to look for food.

The walk, for once had lived up to expectations. The rest of the day was just as exciting with a whole panoply of unusual species putting in an appearance. Thirteen Bewick’s swans, Mediterranean gull, forty-four pintail, common sandpiper, redshank and four Egyptian geese, what a day!

Bob Hook, Volunteer

It may be frozen and gloomy but you can’t cower inside until until May; can you?

What might lift the spirits and get the blood pumping is to come to the Country Park for a walk. We have a fantastic network of paths including 5 miles of surfaced trails for cycling if you’re feeling really active. From a long hike to the shortest stroll the Millennium Country Park offers wonderful views and a variety of meadows, woods and water. At the end of a walk the Lakeside Cafe is the place for a cake, hot soup and coffee.

If you’d like to join others, why not come to one of our guided walks? This weekend there are two.

Feathers in the freezer – a bird walk

The Bird walk   will happen on Saturday 4 February 2012, 8am – 11am and costs £3/adult, £2/child. £1 reduction for Volunteers and Friends.  Life’s tough at this time of year and there’s always a chance of rarities in the Country Park. Our volunteer leaders are the people to tell you what you are looking at or listening to.

No experience of birdwatching is necessary because leaders know everything necessary to introduce you to the wonderful world of birding.  Bring binoculars if you have them although these are not essential as there are usually some spares and often the chance to look down telescopes.

Wrap up warm- birders often spend ages rooted to the spot waiting for something to happen! There are some rough paths and short lengths of gradient over 1:6. Please book in advance but pay the leader on the day. Call 01234 767037 to book a place.

Sunday Stroll, a Gentle Sunday Walk 

5 February at 10.30am
Come and join us in the Country Park for a gentle walk to hear how the Park was set up and a little about the surrounding area.

The walk will keep to hard surfaced tracks in the Park which are mostly level but have short sections of gradient up to 1:9.

Call 01234 767037 for more details.
Cost £1, payable on the day – no need to book. Meet at reception. Walks last approximately 2 hours.                              

Why not finish the morning off with lunch in our Forest Centre Restaurant? Call 01234 767037 for details.

During February there will be some noticeable tree felling in the Millennium Country Park. Anyone who has visited the Park will know that most of the woodland on site is still very young and made up of a diverse mix of British native tree and shrub species. However, there is a significant number of mature trees on site; mostly poplar.

Poplars are fast-growing and naturally short-lived and ours are approaching the end of their lives. The aging process is being hastened by the larvae of the hornet clearwing moth (Sesia apiformis) which create extensive tunnels, generally at the base of trees. The larvae feed on live wood and exposed roots; a process that severely damages trees and leaves them susceptible to being blown over in high winds. Damage caused by the larvae is obvious in severely infested trees that have fallen; the base is reduced to something resembling honeycomb.

Last winter all our mature trees were surveyed by an arboriculturalist for health and condition. This survey will guide the management of these trees in the coming years. It identified a number of trees in particularly poor condition. This, coupled with the fact that many of the trees are in close proximity to well used paths and the railway, means they must be felled for public safety reasons. Some will be pollarded (cut at two metres or more above ground level) where it is safe to do so, to retain standing dead wood. A good proportion of the felled trees will be left to rot down naturally. Dead wood is a hugely important but often overlooked habitat which supports a wide variety of invertebrates as well as the small mammals and birds which feed on them.

This work is scheduled for February to ensure it is completed before the bird nesting season begins and it is likely that a proportion of the poplars on site will be felled each winter in the knowledge that their condition will only deteriorate further in future.

Areas currently dominated by poplar will be restocked in the coming years with the same mix of native species which has been planted in the rest of the Park.

There may be some minor disruption to some of the paths while the work is carried out but short diversions will be marked to ensure this is kept to a minimum.

For further information please contact Anna Charles- Head Ranger at anna.charles@marstonvale.org or 01234 762614

It’s well known that the best pictures are available on the radio. When driving between meetings this morning I caught one of BBC Radio 4’s ‘Nature’ series which described Emma Turner, a pioneering wildlife photographer and some of her life and work on Hickling Broad in Norfolk in the early years of the Twentieth Century.

Apart from being an interesting and inspiring story which you should listen to if you have an interest in wetlands and their wildlife, or indeed, in people achieving great things against what must have been the usual run of things; it also was a wonderful programme to hear on an extremely gloomy January morning. Sounds of a May morning – bitterns, reed warblers, sedge warblers, grasshopper warblers. I closed my eyes and I was there.

This might be a good moment to remind you that we will shortly be taking bookings for the Dawn Chorus Walk and Breakfast 2012, which will almost certainly happen at 4.30am on Saturday 5 May, in the Millennium Country Park. Detail will follow shortly.

In the mean time, listen again to Radio 4, close your eyes and imagine…

I’ve done a lot of scrub bashing in my life (really a lot) and it’s usually quite fun as long as the duration of each episode is limited. One can have too much of a good thing and clearing dangerously prickly hawthorn bushes for days on end in bitter cold and often wet conditions is far from my idea of a good time. Last Sunday’s bash was however, the best ever.

For one thing the weather was fantastic; about as beautiful a January day as I’ve ever experienced. Sharply cold and as clear as a well crafted blog post. Somewhere in the region of twenty five Forest Volunteers showed up at the Forest Centre to spend the morning clearing hawthorn from part of the Callow Mounds. And there was the second good thing – a morning scrub bashing. About long enough to work up an appetite and feel like you’ve earned a sit down, but not so much that your hawthorn hatred gets out of control. Followed by a lazy Sunday afternoon doing not ever so much.

This was our more or less annual Volunteer task and lunch at which the Marston Vale Trust is pleased to offer a small token to say a sincere thank you to the legion of people who help us out doing all sorts of things through the year. The token was lunch and everyone enjoyed it thoroughly.

I had a previous lunch appointment so missed the food, so I will use this opportunity to say thank you to all the Forest Volunteers who make the Forest happen. Without you all we would be unable to make such huge progress each year.

And another thing that made it for me was Anna’s scallops (or were these scollops?) Usually on these occasions one is presented with an area of bushes and asked to cut down bushes. Here we were asked to create scallops, gorgeous curves breaking into the depths of the tangled thorn which can only become beautiful refugia for our butterflies come the spring. Thinking while scrub bashing was a revelation – brilliant!

Guy Lambourne

The video was taken on 4 January 2012. The first of the two divers appeared on the lake on 9 December 2011, a second was seen briefly on 24 December, and two have been present continuously since 3 January 2012.

Great northern divers are now the most regularly seen of the divers in Bedfordshire with a few being present in the county during most of the recent winter periods. These birds breed in Canada, the northern part of the US, Alaska, Greenland, Iceland and very occasionally in Scotland. In the British Isles great northern divers are mainly winter visitors and most are found on the coast, with a probably increasing number wintering inland on large lakes.

Martin Green (Volunteer)

Martin Green appeared in the office this morning having got some good footage of great northern divers on Stewartby Lake. These birds overwinter in the UK, more commonly around or off the shores of the Northern and Western Isles as well as Cornwall, before returning to breeding grounds in Iceland and Greenland in the spring.

Although they aren’t seen frequently on inland freshwater lakes at this time of year, it’s not unheard of. Indeed, I see there are records posted today at www.birdguides.com at Grafham, Cambridgeshire and Rollesby Broad, Norfolk.

Martin promised to get his video on Vimeo. When he does, I’ll get a link up here.

Tuesday 27 December, 8am – 11am.

Shake off the Christmas excess and find out how birds fare at this time of year on a guided walk in the Country Park.

Winter can be a rough time for birds. When the ground’s frozen, worms are difficult to get at and should lakes and ponds freeze, the likes of kingfishers can suffer. However, many species are here to enjoy our relatively mild climate, having flown south to escape the Arctic winter.

Many species arrive in the UK to overwinter and feed in our hedgerows, fields, lakes and wetlands. We should see a good range of these during this walk, given some luck. If anyone can find them, our volunteer bird walk leaders can.

Talk to the experts

You’ll be in good company, with people who really know what they are talking about. But don’t be put off by their great expertise – there’s no point-scoring here (well maybe a little between the experts). However much or little you know about birds, you’ll be made very welcome. If you have binoculars, bring them along but that’s not essential as there are usually some spare pairs and often a chance to look through a telescope. But beware – catching a good view of a beautiful bird through a high quality telescope is a glorious experience and might just be the beginning of a life-time passion.

Binoculars or not – make sure you wrap up warm. This isn’t a hike that will get the blood pumping. These guys are prepared to stand still for long periods to get the view they want. There are some rough paths and short lengths of gradient over 1:6.

£3/adult, £2/child. £1 reduction for Volunteers and Friends

Please book in advance but pay the leader on the day. Call 01234 767037

After weeks of planning, much discussion and a large wedge of cash courtesy of GE Transportation and Network Rail, it’s very good to reflect on a brilliant day of tree planting at the Forest’s newest Community Woodland, near Lidlington, last Sunday. More than 3,000 trees were planted by over three hundred enthusiastic people, who turned out - to make a difference, do something worthwhile, enjoy the extremely bracing wind and a fabulous view, and eat an excellent bacon roll.

People came from near (lots from Lidlington) and far (Leicestershire, Oxford) and there were smiles all round – the ground was soft enough for easy digging but not muddy, the sun shone occasionally and it didn’t rain and there was only the shortest break in the bacon roll supply around 2pm; thanks to Sue and Pete who didn’t get a break from the griddle all day.

To all those who came and planted some trees a huge thank you. Although I generally experience a sense of “here we go again” your enthusiasm always makes these days very enjoyable.

The Top Farm site will be busy all week, Thomas Johnson Lower School’s Years 3 & 4 planted 140 trees yesterday, Timberland UK were there too. On Thursday around 100 employees of Home Retail Group’s Marketing Department will join us to wrap up the week and, hopefully get quite  a few hundred more trees in the ground.

If all that appeals and you’re wondering if there’s another chance to have a bash, you’re in luck. Please join us on Sunday 12 February 2012 to finish the second half of Octagon Wood, near Willington. We will post all the information you need here once things are finalised, but if you want us to let you know direct, type your email address into the box to the right of your screen and press subscribe – we will do the rest.

A gallery of pictures on our Facebook page.

Don Morris, Volunteer Park Warden, has been at it again and this time it’s more exciting than usual. Armed with a remotely triggered infra-red camera, he’s been trying to catch an image of the otter that we know has been frequenting the Park. We know he or she is around because volunteers are out regularly watching for ’spraint’ (poo to you and me); and often find some.

For some weeks Don’s efforts have produced a small collection of interesting but slightly frustrating images – a fox, woodmouse, a spider and a even slug all feature. But now he has struck lucky.

Don recently appeared in the office looking decidedly pleased and showed us a couple of images. Although slightly blurred in black and white, there is no doubt that the animal pictured is an otter. Don reckons there may be a pair in the Park, which bodes well. The area is well provided for water – there are plenty of lakes, large and small; and the Elstow Brook connects the Great Ouse with the heart of the Vale, so there is a simple route into the area.
We are keeping our fingers crossed and would like to thank Don for these exciting images.