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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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!
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| Mum and Stan reunited after ear tagging |
