Monthly Archives: January 2020

A stunning morning – it was tempting to say “Spring morning” because it was such a lovely day and there were lots of birds singing and calling.

Five of us gathered to help Steve Joul complete the surveying and cleaning of the FOAW nest boxes.

…And just when you think that you have seen it all after nine years of surveying nest boxes, you discover something new! – but more of that later.

Four of us met in Buckstone Road and drove the equipment down to the Slabbering Baby, and then two more Friends arrived as we were unloading our vehicles. We started by surveying the nest box by the Slabbering Baby, and then headed up the Meanwood Valley Trail in the direction of Stairfoot Lane to survey the nest boxes we did not manage to reach last week.

We then headed back to the Slabbering Baby and down the Meanwood Valley Trail to the Seven Arches.

As in previous years, most of the nest boxes were utilised last year. We found two nuthatch nests this morning – one in a wooden box, and one in one of our wood crete boxes. Interestingly, whereas the nuthatches had plastered up all the gaps in the wooden box, they had not bothered to do this with the wood crete box. With the nuthatch nest which we found last week, that makes three nuthatch nests last breeding season. We could hear nuthatches calling today.

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The nest boxes had the usual range of critters in them: spiders, woodlice, the odd slug and ladybird, and lots of moth larvae.

We had one rather gothic find in we put up a box which was intended to be for tree creepers, but whose entrance hole is far too big. Inside this box we found the mummified remains of a squirrel!

However, the find of the day was when we opened a tit box to find a beautiful specimen of a noctule bat hibernating there. The bat was wedged up against the lid of the box and we immediately closed the nest box as carefully as possible. This was the first time that we have found a bat in a nest box in nine years of surveying them.

The noctule is the UK’s largest bat – it is 3.7 to 4.8 cm long and has a wingspan of 32-40 cm (that is up to 1’4″ in old money!). It roosts in trees and can be seen flying over the canopy in search of insect prey from April to October.

We completed our survey of the nest boxes at about 2.30 pm. Tired and hungry, but exhilarated by a fantastic day, we retired for our lunch!

Torrential rain at 11 pm last night, so it was a very pleasant surprise this morning to draw the curtains at 7.45 am and see a clear blue sky and a light frost.

A good turn out of seven Friends, meeting in the Stairfoot Lane carpark, with two more joining a little later.

Two of us set off litter picking and picked up four bags of rubbish.

The rest of us set off to clear accumulated leaf litter and molehills from the steps leading from the Stairfoot Lane carpark down to the stream. The steps, which were put in nine years ago, were in danger of reverting to a steep muddy bank!

This was a much bigger job than anticipated and took us all morning.

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However, we got there in the end, and the steps are once more in good nick. No moles were seen or harmed in the course of our activities.

The sun was out all morning and it was a beautiful day to work in the woods. Another beautiful day is forecast for tomorrow when we will be completing our surveying and cleaning of the nest boxes. There was a lot of bird song this morning, and so the blue tits, great tits and other birds seem to be gearing up for this year’s breeding season.

The days are getting imperceptibly longer, the birds are active and there is an aura of Spring in the air: so it must be time to survey and clean the nest boxes in Adel Woods with Steve Joul! It’s a job which takes a day and a half and we did the first day today. We are completing the survey on Sunday the 19th January.

Today it was rather windy out in the open, and the forecast was for rain most of the day, but fortunately it stayed mild and dry all day and, once we were in the woods, we were hardly aware of the wind. We had an excellent turn out of 12 volunteers in the morning, and 7 in the afternoon.

We began by heading up into Alwoodley Plantation past the bat boxes and surveying the nest boxes there, and then making our way westwards to the path which leads south back to Crag Lane and Old Leo’s clubhouse. We then made our way along Crag Lane and surveyed a couple of the nest boxes on Crag Lane before adjourning for lunch at about 1.30 pm.

We resumed at 2.30 with a slightly different team, surveying the rest of the nest boxes along Crag Lane and in the picnic area, and then heading down the Meanwood Valley Trail.

As usual, nearly all of the tit boxes were used. One thing that was unusual was that two of the nest boxes had a complete clutch of unhatched eggs. This was also the case in one of the nest boxes in our garden. Whether this is due to problems with the food supply or the mother coming to an unfortunate end, we shall never know.

As usual, there plenty of moth larvae in the tit boxes. They eat into the wood and convert it into a protective material in which they live. A number of the nest boxes had impressive looking spiders which folded their legs up like Transformers and looked like squashed raisins!

None of the robin boxes surveyed today were used at all. None have ever been used by a robin in the last 10 years, though sometimes they have been used by blue tits or great tits. Robin boxes differ from tit boxes: they are the same size, but instead of having a small round hole, they have a large rectangular opening taking up half of the front of the box. We have placed them in the middle of holly bushes about two or three feet above the ground. It looks as if we are doing something wrong, but robins are doing very well in Alwoodley, so perhaps they don’t need our boxes!

Having surveyed the boxes in the picnic area, we made our way down the Meanwood Valley Trail and surveyed three or four nest boxes until it was becoming too dark to continue.

Our last task of the day was to remove a large birch which had fallen across the Meanwood Valley Trail. We had brought saws to provide for just this eventuality.

Overall a very enjoyable and successful day. We are completing the cleaning and surveying of the nest boxes on Sunday the 19th January between 10 am and 1 pm. Please come along and join us!