A nice morning, and a good turnout of nine Friends of Adel Woods.
This was an extra “work party” for the specific purpose of repairing the steps leading down from the Stairfoot Lane car park to Adel Beck, and unblocking the drainage pipe under Crag Lane near the picnic area.
However, three Friends came to litterpick and between them filled four bags of litter. A wonderful achievement!
The Stairfoot Lane steps
The steps were constructed by the British Trust for Conservation Volunteers in February 2011. Before that, the traveller had to negotiate a rather steep and muddy bank if walking between the stream and Crag Lane. However, it is a public footpath and so Leeds City Council paid for the work to be done. In October 2012, Friends of Adel Woods added five further steps at the top so there are now thirty six. Sometime in 2013 we replaced the original wooden pegs with iron ones.
Maintaining the steps something we have to do regularly as mud is washed onto the steps when it rains, leaves fall onto the steps each Autumn, and the wooden risers rot. In addition, the local moles like to create mole hills on the steps!
Today, the steps were well on their way to returning to being a steep, muddy slope, and five of the risers needed to be replaced. Two or three more will need to be replaced in a year or so.
Amazingly, the six of us working on this task were able to complete the work, including levelling off all the steps, in an hour and a quarter!
We must have done well because a user of the steps emailed FOAW to tell us that we had done an amazing job – which is always nice to hear.
The drainage pipe under Crag Lane
Friends of Adel Woods working on Crag Lane with Steve Joul on 20th February 2011
Until February 2011, Crag Lane near the picnic area used to turn into a quagmire every time it rained as can be seen in the photograph above. In February 2011 Steve Joul led a team of FOAW volunteers in placing a drainage pipe in the offending area and building up the path using hardcore provided by Leeds City Council.
The path is completely transformed as a result of that work, but the pipe needs to be unblocked a couple of times a year.
Using drainage rods to unblock the drainage pipe.
As one of our volunteers remarked: “I love work: I could watch someone doing it all day!”
Five happy Friends of Adel Woods
Friends of Adel Woods were formed in 2009 to help maintain Adel Woods and encourage people to enjoy them. We meet one morning a month to carry out various jobs, and we also put on educational events – this coming weekend we are putting on a Fungal Foray.
If you would like to take part in our activities, get in touch by leaving a comment on our website.
Looking southwards towards the Buck Stone on Thursday the 7th September 2023
A cool and Autumnal day. And also the day of the Meanwood Valley Trail Race organised by the Meanwood Valley Striders running club, so there were lots of runners in Adel Woods this morning.
Today we had two tasks: litterpicking and clearing scrub from around the Buck Stone.
The Buck Stone is a large outcrop of rock in the woods behind Buckstone Avenue. It has been recorded as a landmark on maps for over two hundred and fifty years and – you are ahead of me! – the Buckstone estate is named after it.
It has been a popular feature in the woods for many years, and members of FOAW can remember playing on it as children over fifty years ago!
Litterpicking
Unusually, we only had one litter picker, Sue, today.
She picked up three bags of rubbish, one of which was a bag of rubbish thrown into the bushes near the Buckstone Road entrance to the woods. She also found gas canisters and balloons in the Stairfoot Lane car park, and a disposable barbecue and box of raw bacon at Adel Crag!
The Buck Stone
Friends of Adel Woods first worked on the Buck Stone in March 2012 at the request of local residents. At that time, it was almost completely covered and hidden from view in the Summer by a large oak tree growing into the eastern end of the rock. We cut back most of the tree and cleared scrub under the guidance of our local ranger, Steve Joul, and restored the landmark to its former glory.
The Buck Stone “before and after” on the 30th March 2012
Since then, we have worked on the Buck Stone on 21 March 2015, 24th April 2016, and 8th April 2017. However, we have not worked on it since 2017 and this morning it was once more largely obscured from view by the oak tree, brambles, himalayan balsam and bracken. In fact, we had not seen such tall bracken and himalayan balsam – some plants were seven to eight feet high.
The southern face of the Buck Stone at 10.25 am this morning
The task looked daunting and the plan was to start from the Buck Stone and move outwards, to get the maximum bang for our Buck! But to begin we had to clear a way through to even reach the Buck Stone! And we also had to clear a space for a compost heap where we could put all the vegetation we removed. This in itself was a big job.
We started with a team of seven volunteers, but thankfully numbers gradually increased till there were twelve of us.
It was hard work, but as usual there was lots of interesting conversation and laughter – each of the Friends working on different parts of the project.
The northern face of the Buck Stone: 11.55 am on Saturday 16th September 2023
We finished at noon, and we achieved far more than we thought we could. Once more, the Buck Stone is a feature of Adel Woods and a place where people can sit, relax and dream, and young children can climb and play and use their imagination.
Thank you to all our volunteers. It is not just the Buck Stone that rocks. You rock too!
The southern face of the Buck Stone, noon on Saturday the 16th September
Friends of Adel Woods were formed in 2009 to help maintain Adel Woods and encourage people to enjoy them. We meet one morning a month to carry out various jobs, and we also put on educational events. If you would like to take part in our activities, get in touch by leaving a comment on our website.
Tonight David Preston, Parks and Countryside ranger with Leeds City Council, led an enthusiastic band of “bat detectorists” on a walk round Adel Woods: our mission to learn about bats. It was a clear, dry and mild evening so a good night for finding the object of our study.
We met at 7.15 in Old Leo’s car park where David (pictured in the orange hi-vis jacket) outlined the plan for the evening and gave an excellent introductory talk about bats, their importance ecologically and how to survey them, and shared some interesting facts about bats around the world. Perhaps one of the most surprising facts was that there are seventeen species of bat in the UK, several of which can be found in the suburbs of Leeds! David handed out paper “cut outs” showing the relative sizes of some of the UK species.
In preparation for this evening’s walk, yours truly (ie me!) had been out in the woods three evenings this week to find out when and where bats were likely to be found. The good news is that there were bats present in various locations – in Old Leo’s carpark; by the track leading down to the cricket pavilion; in the practice rugby pitch to the north of Crag Lane, and around the picnic area and Adel Crag. At this time of year they seemed to be appearing in flight at about 8.10 pm (sunset was at about 7.40 pm). At this time of year, bats are building up their fat supplies to prepare for their winter hibernation.
A pair of the twenty or so bat detectors brought by David
Whilst it is possible to see bats in flight at dusk, it is not possible – at least not for the non-specialist – to identify the particular species by sight. The way to detect the presence of bats, especially as it gets dark, and to identify which species is present, is by using a “bat detector”. And so David had brought twenty of so for us to use.
David explained that whilst bats have excellent eyesight, they find their way about and catch their insect prey using an echo-location system. As they fly, they send out high pitch sounds, and the echos from these sounds enable the bats to track and catch insect prey. The high pitch sounds are too high for human hearing and so the bat detector picks up the sounds and converts them into clicks which humans can hear. It also identifies the pitch of the sounds which helps you to know which species of bat is making them, and David handed out sheets which gave the frequency of the different bat clicks. For example, the noctule bat, the UK’s largest bat makes clicks at the frequency of 25kHz; the pipistrelle on the other hand, makes clicks at the frequency of 50kHz.
After a quick lesson on how to use the bat detectors, we made our way to have a look at some bat boxes which Friends of Adel Woods made and put up in the woods in January 2010 under the tutelage of Steve Joul, then a ranger with Leeds Parks and Countryside.
Steve Joul holding a bat box in January 2010 to show the slot in the bottom of the box used by bats to enter and leave the box
We put up eight bat boxes near Old Leo’s clubhouse, four on each of two trees. We put the boxes approximately twenty feet up, with the boxes on each tree facing roughly North, South, East and West so that the bats could choose the best for them. Bat boxes differ from tit nest boxes in that they don’t have a hole on the front of the box. Instead, the back of the box protrudes down below the box and bats land on this and then crawl into the box and come out again through a slot in the bottom.
The Echo Meter Touch Active Bat Detector
Whilst Friends of Adel Woods put up the boxes, it would be illegal for us to take them down and have a look inside. This was therefore a good opportunity for David to use his specialist Echo Meter Touch Active Bat Detector which fits on a smart phone, to see if there were any sounds of bats in the vicinity of the boxes. Unfortunately, it detected no activity near either set of boxes.
However, when doing our annual survey of the FOAW tit boxes, two years running we were surprised to find a noctule bat hibernating in one of them! David also recounted that when surveying dormice in North Yorkshire (which he is licensed to do) he has found bats roosting in dormouse nesting boxes; and he has even found a tit box containing a tit nest and eggs, with a dormouse sharing the box!
From the bat boxes we made our way towards the moor, past the cricket pitch, looking out for bats and listening for any noises coming from our bat detectors. The first clear sounds and sightings of bats came as we crossed the stream behind the cricket pavilion. Our detectors told us that the bats in the area were noctule (25kHz), pipistrelle (50kHz) and soprano pipistrelle (55kHz) bats.
From there we made our way up to Adel Moor, which we thought could be a good place to see and detect bats. However, we just picked up the odd sign of bat activity. So yours truly took the opportunity to explain the importance of the moor as a habitat for common lizards and green hairstreak butterflies, and to talk about the work which Friends of Adel Woods and the Parks and Countryside rangers have done to maintain the moor.
Part of the screen of David’s Echo Meter bat detector
From the moor we returned to Old Leo’s carpark via the cricket pavilion and made our way from there to the disused rugby pitch where there have been a number of bats earlier in the week. Again we detected bats but not as many as seen on earlier evenings – and the battery on David’s Echo Meter ran out!
However, when we were in the disused rugby pitch we heard tawny owls calling from opposite ends of the field.
By now it was 9.15 pm and time to finish. The preliminary results from David’s Echo Meter bat detector, subject to proper analysis, were that we saw and detected four species of bat:
noctule
pipistrelle
soprano pipistrelle
natterers bat
This is a print out from David’s Echo Meter. As can be seen, most bat activity was detected in the area in front of the cricket pavilion.
Thank you to David Preston for leading an interesting and enjoyable walk, and thanks to everyone who attended. It was a great evening.
I hope that you have found this blog post interesting. The next “educational” event organised by Friends of Adel Woods will be on the afternoon of Sunday the 8th October 2023, when Steve Joul will be leading a Fungal Foray.
Friends of Adel Woods were formed in 2009 to protect, enhance and maintain Adel Woods and to work with Leeds City Council and other groups and organisations to that end. We meet one weekend morning a month to carry out a variety of tasks in the woods. If you would like to join us, have a look at our website for upcoming events: we welcome everyone who would like to help us to look after the beautiful woods on our doorstep.
Friends of Adel Woods 
