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!
Friends of Adel Woods 