Wicken Fen Ambassadors

A note from our Assistant Ranger Stu:

   Last Tuesday I had the pleasure of leading Wicken Fen’s first ambassador work party. Armed with plenty of tools we headed off to the butterfly trail to help create the brand new glade. The previous week, with some help from friends at the RSPB and their reciprocating mower, we had cut all the Wood Small Reed (Calamagrostis epigeious) right the way to ground level and the volunteers’ task was simple, to pick up the mess we had created!

   As some important butterfly species, such as Common Blue (Polyommatus Icarus) and Holly Blue (Celastrina argiolus), hibernate at the base of the Wood Small Reed or on the ground, so we had to be careful to minimise the disturbance as much as possible, and as such, using rakes was out of the question. With a pitch fork each we had to carefully pick up the cuttings without disturbing the ground and carry it off into the nearby scrub.

Careful "raking" to avoid dormant butterfly pupae

   Whist not the most glamorous job, the work party performed admirably and finished the work well ahead of schedule. It is really starting to take shape now, and with the addition of a wild flower seed mix to be planted in spring, the glade should look fantastic by the end of 2015.

Wheeling the cuttings away into the scrub

  In addition to this work, we also had a go at pollarding some of the trees around the trail. We do this to add a bit of diversity to the tree structure, and the fresh growth that will pop up next spring is brilliant for a huge variety of different insects.  Again, keeping up the hard work, the ambassador party managed to achieve a huge amount of work in the short amount of time given. It might look a little extreme at the moment, but when the trees start growing the effect will be quite beautiful.

Pollarding

   Everyone seemed to have great fun, and we will hopefully see them next month for another work party. Well done team, you did a brilliant job!

The happy team after a days work

    If you would like to join us as a Wicken Fen Ambassador then please email maddie.downes@nationaltrust.org.uk for more information.

To finish up:

   We also had some Christmas calves over the last couple of weeks. Bramble has had a red bull calf that will be called Enion, after the naturalist Eric Enion who grew up in Burwell and wrote the book “Adventurer’s Fen” about the changing ecology of Burwell Fen over the 40 years before it was drained as part of the war effort in World War 2.

Enion hiding behind mum on Monday, it took me ages to find him!

Wendy also calved this week. She is the proud mum of another bull calf called Stan. 

Mum and Stan reunited after ear tagging

New Corral on Tubney

In preparation for a work party last Friday, Stu, Lois and I moved some very large reels of old stock netting. We had to use the big tractor as the reels were so heavy and Stu managed to achieve the ultimate goal and get a reel onto each prong of the pallet forks. 

Stu with his "double pronging"!

So with the fencing out the way UK power networks were free to come in and help build a corral as part of their Helping Hands project. They've done a fantastic job and three quarters of the corral is fully built. The clay was so hard that even their massive auger was struggling to dig down to six foot deep, which is why we didn't quite get it finished on the day. They did do a great job though and we are very grateful for all their hard work.

Team photo at the end of the day, with the new corral in the background

A close up of the corral

Once finished the corral will help our tenant farmers get their cattle on and off the site. It will hopefully make things a lot easier as once penned up you can push the cows into a trailer. We're also putting a fancy gate system in the middle so that the herd can be split once in the corral.

I had a couple of training session at Anglesey Abbey last week so ended up filling an hour in the evening between courses by wondering around the gardens. It was very atmospheric with the mist coming in and the sun setting behind the trees. I also got a sneak preview of some of the Winter Lights things that the Gardeners were putting up and testing. It looks like it will be another fantastic event and I hear the first weekend has already gone down a storm.

Sunset over the Anglesey Abbey gardens

Winter Water Fun

The beginning of winter is the signal for a few jobs to be done around the fen.

Firstly we start abstracting water onto the fen in November. We have a few abstraction points dotted around, the most obvious being the wind pump on the Sedge Fen side of Wicken Lode. I turned the water onto Burwell Fen last week, filling up the scrapes next to Reach Lode. These areas create excellent habitat for wildfowl and waders, we’re already seeing a lot of our winter migrants, like widgeon, coming in. The abstraction mimics the winter flooding that would occur naturally if the water ways weren’t so closely controlled. Maintaining these water levels is important to the plant communities and, along with the sedge cutting, is one of the most important management tools we use to preserve fen conditions.

Water turned on onto Burwell Fen

Ruby and I did another winter job this week and removed the temporary pontoon from Wicken Lode. The pontoon is used over the summer for the boat trips during the day. As it is up by the junction with Monk’s Lode it reduces the amount of traffic going down the Wicken Lode spur, which has a delicate balance of rare aquatic plants and invertebrates. Even though it is a cold job having to submerge your arms in the water to unscrew the shackles, it was fun riding on the pontoon, keeping it away from the banks, as Ruby towed it down the lode. We then pulled it out of the lode with the tractor, and have hidden it in the scrub ready to be pulled back out in the spring.

The pontoon emerging from the Lode.

There are some beautiful sunsets occurring over the fen at the moment, and some impressive starling murmurations. I’ve already seen lots photographers out, and even I’ve managed to get some good pictures on my phone.

Baker's Fen looking pretty in the sunset

We had the grand opening of our newly refurbished docky hut on Tuesday. It is looking superb, with fresh green walls, a new dishwasher and fridge, and a fancy hot water dispenser. Well done to Ruby and her troops who have done a fantastic job.

The fancy new Docky Hut

A rave, cutting and slubbing

This time of year we are quite busy down the fen, trying to get the cutting finished before the water table rises, slubbing the ditches out, and getting ready for our winter tree work.

Rave at Burwell Fen

Over the first weekend of November an rave took place on Burwell Fen, clearly this had a considerable impact on the wildlife present on site as well as our ponies and cattle grazing the field next door. Dealing with it, the rubbish and vandalism has taken the best part of a week so far to sort out and is costing a considerable amount to repair.

The good news is that so far we have seen lots of signs that the wildlife is getting back to normal, owl pellets in the barn as well as Barn Owls and Short Eared Owls in the fields near by, kingfishers in the ditches, Marsh Harriers, and deer roaming about. The bunded wetter area is also doing well, I haven’t spent any time with the binoculars out but I have spotted Little Egrets, Kestrels and lots of ducks and geese.

We have filled a big skip up with rubbish and bits of fence that were ripped down to gain access in as well as out of the barn site. A huge amount of rubbish, mostly drinks cans bottles and boxes along with zillions of small gas bottles, balloons and toilet roll (shudder), the site also doubled as a toilet for the rave. Adding to the frustration was the fact that quite a bit of the litter was stuck to the barn floor and had to be pressure washed off, no tap or power on site so we had to fill a bowser and hire a pressure washer in.

I spent most of Sunday at Burwell Fen, making sure that people didn’t accidentally let our ponies and cattle out by attempting to leave the wrong way, chatting to people down there to let them know that the site is a nature reserve so they might have some inkling of the damage being caused and in general keeping an eye on things. One thing that was evident was the complete ignorance to the level of damage being caused, and the value of the countryside. Numerous people reassured me that they would tidy the mess up, and that they do after such events. Some apologised for the actions of others but were unable to rectify there impact as over 1000 people were estimated to have attended, and others just didn’t really seem to mind. An effort was made to tidy up by a small number of people, I would think that about 30 bin bags were filled. Those 30 bags did make a difference, and were collected in good spirits, I don’t want to completely disregard this assistance but it was in effect a token effort. People might have gone home thinking that they made good, that they cleared their mess and even some of the mess of others, but the collective mess of the rave was still strewn all over the place. No one should be under the illusion that the rave left us to deal with anything but a massive mess, an orange poo was discovered, 11 medical grade nitrogen oxide bottles were dumped on site, fences had to be rebuilt. If you visited for the rave please come back and see what a fantastic place Burwell Fen is and recognise the impact the rave had.

Here are a few pics and a video from Burwell Fen, sometimes the video isn't showing so sorry if you have a big gap here.

Looking forwards, the fences are fixed locks have been replaced and we are now almost ready to let our ponies and cattle have access to the whole of Burwell Fen.

Slubbing

Slubbing is the clearing out of ditches, in a conservation context it is usually carried out over varying intervals to promote diversity. At Wicken we have ditches cleared out from every 2 years up to every 12 if my memory of the management plan serves me correctly. Some ditches are also left to naturally succeed without being cleared at all. By clearing the ditch out the process of succession where different species slowly take over from one another over time is stopped and put back to the beginning. As different species depend on the various stages of this succession the different slubbing rotations provide as many species as possible the niches they require to thrive.

Here Jason is slubbing out the Wind Pump Ditch next to the boardwalk. The slubb is being put in a dumper and moved into another field. Often there isn’t anywhere to move the slubb to so it is spread out on the ground next to the ditch.

Cutting

We have had a lot of trouble cutting the fen this year as it has been too wet to get machinery on to large areas of it. At the moment we are working on the two remaining areas waiting to be cut; the higher areas around the boardwalk and the Butterfly Trail. The sides of the boardwalk get cut on similar rotations to the rest of the Sedge Fen but just scaled down. The narrow bits next to the boardwalk are cut throughout the year, level with the boardwalk to keep them from growing over and everyone getting wet, at the end of the year they are then cut down to ground level and the litter removed and piled up, similar to the droves on the fen. This reduces the amount of nutrients being left on the ground and encourages a more diverse growth in following years. There are a also few sections of the boardwalk that run next to ditches, we can't get our tractors to these bits so they are cut with a brush cutter. As they are slightly higher than the rest of the fen most of them can be cut slightly later in the year than the rest of the fen as they stay dry. Cutting with a brush cutter and clearing by hand also means the ground doesn’t get too churned up.These sections are cut on a three year rotation like the compartments on the Sedge Fen.

Once this is all done, it is off to the Butterfly Trail. Plenty of care to protect the grass tussocks where lots of larvae spend the winter. The plan is also for a good deal of chainsawing to create a new glade and hopefully some stump grinding too.

Lots to do!

As usual you can follow us on Twitter @WickenFenNT @Vision_Warden or on Facebook.

Godwin Plots

We have been embarking on the massive rake-a-thon that occurs this time every year. When the fen is too wet to drive the tractors on to cut and clear the sedge, its back to good old fashioned elbow grease  and large portion of the ranger team took their rakes and went across the fen to the Godwin plots last week. 

The Godwin Plots are a reminder of the scientific importance and history of the fen. Sir Harry Godwin set up the plots as part of an experiment in 1927. He was investigating the impact of cutting vegetation on plant communities. He split the experimental sites into 5 plots, each with a different cutting regime; the first was cut yearly, the next every two years, the next every three, and then four and the final one was never cut. His results showed that management alone could have a great impact on the flora, with the plots cut more regularly showing a decline in the sedge species Cladium maricus and an increase in Purple Moor Grass (Molina caerulea) and tall fen herbs such as marsh thistle (Cirisium vulgare) and yellow loosestrife (Lysimachia vulgaris). The plant communities could be changed from mixed sedge characteristics to herd rich litter communities just by changing the frequency of cutting. These were ground breaking findings at the time, and helped support the new theory of ecological succession of which Godwin was a supporter. Godwin finished his experiments in 1940, the but plots were revived in 1955 for Cambridge University students to study, by which time scrub species like alder buckthorn (Frangula alnus) and brambles (Rubus fruticosus) were also appearing in the plots that were cut less often. To this day we continue to cut the plots at the same timings as first proposed by Godwin. We only had to cut the annual plot this year so, Ruby went up with a tractor earlier in the month, when the weather was a little drier, to do the cutting and then some of the other rangers went up to rake off the cuttings by hand last week.

Beautifully raked Godwins

It's not just the Godwin plots keeping us busy. We've also been raking up the cuttings along Wicken Lode, Drainer's Ditch and part of Sedge Fen Drove, as well as decorating the newly refurbished Docky Hut and supervising our contractors, JW Fencing, who are currently putting up some fantastic new fences for us. 

More raking!

Lois and I were happy to have a work party from BT back to help us spruce up the wild campsite. They’ve done a fantastic job fixing the toilet door, and have built some lovely new steps to make getting to the toilet slightly easier. So thank you guys and we look forward to having you again!

The BT chaps with their fantastic new steps and toilet door.