A beautiful morning, but – By Gum – it was cold first thing! It took your correspondent 20 minutes to scrape the ice off the car windows – including inside! Nevertheless, eleven Friends turned out for this morning’s work party. Five of us litterpicking. and the rest of us path clearing. And it was a lovely day for working in the woods.
The litter pickers picked up about six bags of rubbish on Buckstone Road, the Village Green, Crag Lane, the Hospice Woodland and on the track down to the cricket pavilion.
For the path clearers the objective this morning was to improve the path running alongside Adel Beck. Historically, there has been a path by the beck on the Alwoodley side all the way from Stairfoot Lane bridge down to the Spring Hill bridge, just downhill from the Slabbering Baby. However, in recent years the path has become overgrown and muddy and its route unclear at the halfway point, in the region of Adel Bog. Our focus today was to work on the path from Spring Hill bridge up to the midway point.
Getting under way: the path by Adel Beck – Spring Hill bridge can just be seen to the right
Near Spring Hill bridge, the path had been eroded away by the beck, making it a bit hazardous, as can be seen in the photograph above. One of our first jobs was therefore to move the route of the path further away from the stream and remove brambles and a large sapling which was growing across the path.
Looking towards Spring Hill Bridge
The main things to tackle today were brambles and holly which were making the path very narrow – even before the growing season starts again.
Making our way home
In the space of two hours we were able to accomplish our aims, though there is still a lot to do – principally to improve the muddy sections of the path and to improve way marking.
BeforeAfterViews of Spring Hill Bridge before and after clearing brambles and saplings
The two photographs show the difference made in the vicinity of Spring Hill bridge. The tree on the left can just be seen in the “before” photograph though it is obscured by the brambles which we removed. You can also see to the right of the tree the stump of the large sapling which we removed because it was growing across the path.
Adel Beck path looking upstream from the vicinity of Spring Hill bridge – after clearing and widening the path
Another satisfying and successful morning for the Friends of Adel Woods!
Today was the second (and concluding) part of the Friends of Adel Woods annual nest box survey and Spring clean. Yesterday (in part 1) we started by surveying the nest boxes to the north of Crag Lane and spent the afternoon surveying the nest boxes on the Meanwood Valley Trail from the picnic area down to just short of Adel Pond.
This was another day which defied the weather forecast and turned out to be a lovely harbinger of the nesting season.
We met at 10 am in Old Leo’s car park. Five Friends turned out, including two who were taking part in the nest box survey and Spring clean for the first time!
Today, our first task was to put up “Tina’s nest box”, so named because Tina gave it to us! Situated on Crag Lane, near Old Leo’s car park, it is without doubt our best nest box, being made of woodcrete, a mixture of concrete and straw. It is spacious, dry, and designed to let the inhabitants nest well back from the entrance hole, away from the reach of predators. We cleaned it out yesterday, but found it too heavy to put back. Today with the use of a “stand off” to the ladder, we were able to put it back up.
From the car park, we made our way down to the pond with our wheelbarrow, ladders and equipment and started with box 42, just to the north of the pond. This contained a blue tit nest (we know because the entrance hole is 25 mm, so too small for birds like great tits) and the presence of droppings indicated that it had been used for roosting.
Cleaning out nest box 42
Incidentally, the reason we clean out the nest boxes each year, is that the species which use our nest boxes – like blue tit, great tit, sparrow and nuthatch – do not re-use nests from previous years. This was made clear by the lockdown in January 2021 which prevented us from cleaning our nest boxes that year. When we surveyed the boxes in January 2022, most nest boxes contained two nests, one on top of the other. It is also clear why the birds evolved to make new nests each year: when we clean out the boxes, the old nests are often full of lice and mites, droppings from roosting birds, and damp, rotted moss – not a great environment for young birds.
Nest box 38 – a sparrow nest?
Our next nest box was number 38, just by the bridge below the pond. This was unusual in that it seemed to contain a sparrow nest – which is made of straw – rather than a tit nest which is made of moss and fine grass. On several occasions, nuthatches have nested in this location, but not this year.
We then surveyed and cleaned out the nest boxes on the Meanwood Valley Trail from the Slabbering Baby down to Seven Arches, finishing at about 1.45 pm.
In all, we cleaned and surveyed seventeen nest boxes today. This is the overall summary:
twelve boxes contained tit nests;
one box contained an incomplete tit nest;
one appeared to contain a sparrow nest, but strangely it had a small amount of moss (which is typical of a tit nest) on the top;
two small nest boxes which we put up last year were not used, but one contained a small amount of moss;
one of the boxes containing a tit nest had clearly been used initially by nuthatches, but it looks as though they were driven out;
another box showed extensive work by nuthatches, but there was no nest.
I mentioned above that there was some evidence of nuthatches in the nest boxes but no nuthatch nests. In some years we have found one or two nuthatch nests. They are very distinctive for two reasons. Firstly, nuthatches seal all possible gaps in the nest box with copious amounts of mud, both on the inside and outside – and sometimes make the entrance hole smaller. Secondly, the nest is not made with moss and grass but with bark chips, so the nest box looks rather as if someone has tipped some bran flakes into it.
Courtesy of RSPB websiteA nuthatch and a nuthatch nest: note the mud around the top of the box
Nuthatches are very sleek looking birds which are the only UK bird that can climb headfirst down a tree trunk!
A view of Meanwood Beck through the trees in Adel Woods: 15th January 2023
Time again to get the ladders out, get out in the woods, and clean and survey the Friends of Adel Woods nest boxes! We have put up forty three since 2010 and surveying them is always an interesting and sociable activity.
Despite a dire weather forecast for today, the weather started off quite reasonably and got better and sunnier throughout the morning. Eight of us turned out for this morning’s start on the job, and five of us returned for the afternoon shift.
Meeting in Old Leo’s car park
We met in Old Leo’s car park at 10 am and, led by Steve Joul our wildlife adviser, we set off into Alwoodley plantation.
Our first job was to put up a new bat box which we had been given by two of our Friends.
We put up seven bat boxes in 2010 to provide shelter for bats to roost in over the Summer months, and hopefully hibernate in over the Winter.
We are not allowed to have a look inside the bat boxes, but one fell off the tree a couple of years ago and this was a good opportunity to replace it.
If you look at the photo, you will see that bat boxes are very different from tit boxes: there is no entrance hole on the front! Bats enter the box by landing on the wood protruding downwards beneath the box and then crawling up into the box through a slit in the bottom. So you can see that bats powers to negotiate the environment by echo-location are truly astonishing.
You can also see that there are bat boxes on the left and right hand side of the tree. This is because bats are sensitive to temperature, and we put the boxes on different sides of the tree so that they can choose the one that suits them best.
Ten unhatched eggs from nest box 5
Having put up the bat box we headed further into Alwoodley Plantation, our first stop being nest box 5 on a Scots pine near the Devil’s Rock. This contained a nest but there were ten unhatched eggs of various sizes. We measured them and came to the conclusion that they were probably great tit eggs. We’ll never know what happened, but presumably the parents were taken by predators. As you can see the eggs are very small, and it is a source of wonder that in a matter of weeks great tits (or blue tits) can develop into fully adult birds from such small beginnings.
Cleaning nest box 5The new bat boxTaking down “Tina’s” nest box near Old Leo’s
There is always plenty to do on the nest box surveys: Steve carries the ladder; one of us pushes the wheelbarrow loaded with all the tools which are needed to clean and, if necessary repair, the boxes; one of us (usually Steve or yours truly) climbs the ladder to bring the nest boxes down to the ground. We then take it in turns to open the box, and clean it before returning it to the tree. One of us makes a note of what we find, and one of us scouts around to find the next nest box: sometimes it can be very hard to find them and occasionally we don’t!
At about 12.50, having surveyed sixteen nest boxes, we decided it was time for a lunch break and we headed back to yours truly’s home to eat our sandwiches, and have a cup of tea and a piece of cake.
Duly replenished, we were back in the woods by 2.30, when we surveyed two nest boxes on Crag Lane, and then made our way down the Meanwood Valley trail from the picnic area down to Adel Pond – surveying another seven nest boxes until dusk arrived and it started to rain and hail!
In summary, today we surveyed twenty five nest boxes. Twenty one of these were tit boxes and four were robin boxes.
Of the twenty one tit boxes, all had been used for nesting except for one which had fallen off the tree. We cannot say that all of the nests were successful. Some clearly were as the nest looked used and was empty. Some had one or two eggs left in the nest and the assumption is that the other ten or so eggs hatched and the youngsters fledged. As reported above, the first nest box we surveyed contained ten unhatched eggs. Another nest box contained the macabre remains of eleven chicks. Presumably their parents were predated.
Turning to the robin boxes, the RSPB website says this about robin nesting habits:
“Most nests are located on or near the ground in hollows, nooks and crannies, climbing plants, hedgebanks, tree roots, piles of logs and any other situations which provide a fully concealed cavity.
“If a nestbox is provided to attract robins, it needs to be open-fronted, and placed in a hidden location in a climber or other such vegetation. Robins are famous for nesting in all kinds of unlikely locations, including sheds, kettles, boots, hanging baskets, coat pockets, under car bonnets, in farm machinery, even on boats in daily use.“
Robin nest boxes differ from tit boxes in that they have a large entrance – as shown in this photo taken when nest box 15 was made.
Clearly a nest box like this is very easy for a predator, such as a squirrel, to enter, so when we put them up in January 2010 we placed them on tree trunks a couple of feet off the ground in the middle of holly bushes. Two unintended consequences of this are (a) that they are very painful to reach to survey and (b) we have never been able to find one of the robin boxes which we put up!
None of the robin boxes have been used by robins for nesting. Occasionally, over the years they have been used by tits for nesting.
This year, two of the robin boxes contained a mass of oak leaves showing that they had been used by squirrels for roosting.
It was a very satisfying and enjoyable day, but yours truly was glad to get home and have a hot bath!
Views of Adel Woods on Saturday the 14th January 2023
Friends of Adel Woods 