Category: Uncategorized (Page 2 of 5)

Chris Gilchrist

This year where I live in South Devon a lot of oaks have oak acorn galls. These are caused by a wasp,  Andricus quercuscalicis, which lays its eggs in the developing acorn which then deforms. The wasp grub eventually eats its way out leaving a small hole. Are these in evidence at Greenstreete?

Maybe this has happened because the oaks also seem to have a lot more acorns this year. Is it a mast year for acorns? ” A mast year is a term used in ecology to describe a year in which trees or other plants produce a large number of seeds or fruits, much more than in typical years. These years usually occur irregularly, every few years, and are followed by years with much lower seed production.” It’s a trick often used in nature: overwhelm your predators with abundance. 

When oak trees produce lots more acorns, jays – which bury acorns and retrieve them to eat in winter – bury more than their usual tally: up to 7,000 of them. This excess means that despite having good memories,  the birds forget where they’ve put many of them…  so there’s a bigger crop of new oak saplings the following year. 

(Ed: Here is more info on the different types of Oak gall – https://www.rhs.org.uk/biodiversity/oak-gall-wasps )

Greenstreete Oaks:

Ed: Here is info on mast years:

Mary has sent some new camera footage.
Really glad to see the Otter being curious about the new platform.
Amazing footage of a Rabbit/Hare swimming! Have never seen that before!

At the pond, a camera at the larger jetty has caught a Dipper (see it dip up and down!) and a pair of Mandarin Ducks, resplendent even at night time in black and white.

An Otter is also seen enjoying the jetty, and a deer.

and a few videos of the Otter:

We held our first Aquatic Invertebrate workshop on Fri 23 May, led by local ecologist Phil Ward and in partnership with the Radnorshire Wildlife Trust. We had 7 meditators (as part of an Activities week) and 7 members of the local community, including an RWT officer and the CEO of the RWT, take part and it was great fun! We learned how to monitor the river water quality by studying the invertebrates in it.

The video shows no, not Phil doing a strange water dance, but a demonstration of kick sampling. It does look very enthusiastic (!) but he went out of his way to assure us that this won’t harm any creatures, and that all the samples taken were alive. We collected samples of creatures and took them up to the house to identify under microscopes. The weather was beautiful which meant that we could do this outside.

Here’s a list of inverts we spotted on the day, with an example of the scoring, although it was only an example and of course we can’t officially use the score as it wasn’t the exact survey method. But it does give a good impression of the water quality. Phil assures us that, however, there’s no doubt that the river would score higher than this if we did a full methodology survey on it. He expects it would fall within the very good water quality score area.

Phil managed to identify the leech we had down to species level. Interestingly, it is an ectoparasite, found only on freshwater fish, especially salmon & trout apparently, but other fish as well, and is a common leech species. This must indicate we have fish in the river too.

A very enjoyable day was had by all and we intend to hold more days like this involving the local community.

New to Greenstreete and a nice surprise.

Pine Martens are now returning again in Wales. For more information see here.

Spiling (not spilling) is a term for the particular kind of willow weaving used to protect river banks. You can read a more detailed description of it here.

Dan from Radnorshire Wildlife Trust has just finished some spiling to protect the bank of the River Lugg from further erosion near the road bridge.

He used the willow withies from our Willow trees that we planted on a land work session in 2013!

All sorts of goings on on the old jetty by the lake!

– report by Jools Roszkowski

Members of the Samatha Land Group, Cambrian Sangha, local community, Wildlife Trust and Powys Biodiversity Information Service (BIS) gathered on a sunny morning, Weds 26th March, to carry out a Bioblitz at Greenstreete.

A biolitz is where you choose a patch of land and set a window of time in which to survey all the flora and fauna you can spot. It’s a snapshot of the biodiversity present, and recorded findings are fed into county records. Over time, repeated surveys give a picture of the changing ecology of a place.

Everyone was enthusiastic and astounded by the richness of what we were finding, even this early in the Spring.

Here are 2 intrepid lichen, moss and liverwort experts scaling the quarry by the river hut:

By the new ponds, we found a tiny snail with a golden shell – imagine that!

We got up close with our powerful magnifying lenses to inspect the tiniest plants and extended our hearing far and wide…….

….. to hear birds in the trees, Red Kite and Buzzard above and Canada Geese who have taken a liking to the pond:

We tracked the signs of animal movement through the woods and along the river.

Interesting discussions were had about meditation and nature on our way back to the house, where we finished up with tea, cake and biscuits.

~~~

Spring is a time of abundance and hence predation.

Twelve videos here from the wildlife cameras, earlier in March, show lots of the Greenstreete wildlife taking advantage of frog spawning season, when frogs return to water bodies in great numbers and are easy prey.

A heron and otters can be seen munching, and in the polecat video you can see the bright, reflective eyes of two frogs in ‘amplexus’ towards us as the polecat makes off with another.
We can see the heron rotating the unfortunate frog or toad to orient it for swallowing but the frog or toad’s legs are stuck out which prevents this. The heron dips it in the water a few times and re-catches it. We can’t see what happens in the end.
Also the new camera location on the track has shown us a badger for the first time, and we also see the badger at the old camera locations on the crossing, and the jetty. Perhaps the badger also is out at night looking for frogs.

Last of all, the new camera on the island shows us two happy otters.

A new meditation platform has been made, located in the field through the gate by the oak tree, to the left of the ‘flexible space.’

Throughout the land, these platforms provide private places to meditate in the natural environment; feeling and hearing the air and elements and space and life all around one’s body while sitting there.