Friends of Adel Woods had a stall at the Alwoodley Parish Community Picnic this afternoon. Alwoodley Parish Council, Alwoodley 2030, Incredible Edible Alwoodley, and Incredible Edible Moortown were also there.
Just setting up our stall
Though overcast at 2 pm, it turned into a beautiful afternoon and we all really enjoyed the event.
Steve Joul, our committee member and ace naturalist, brought two quizzes and spent the afternoon entertaining the public, and yours truly led a twenty minute “mindfulness walk” along Crag Lane and back.
“I really enjoyed yesterday, especially the mindfulness walk and the quizzes. Thank you everyone.”
“…some great networking went on between the groups and people clearly enjoyed the quiz.”
We were also grateful to Dan Cohen, the Lord Mayor of Leeds, who came with the Lady Mayoress to support the event.
Join Friends of Adel Woods
We hope that you have enjoyed reading about our activities and would be delighted if you would like to join us.
Friends of Adel Woods were formed in 2009 to help maintain Adel Woods and encourage people to enjoy them. We meet one weekend morning a month to carry out various jobs or ”work parties”, and we also put on educational events such as bat walks, fungal forays and birdsong walks.
We are a very friendly group and welcome new members who want to help preserve our special woods, enjoy fresh air and exercise in the woods, and make new friends.
If you would like to take part in our activities, keep an eye on our Home Page and come along to one of our work parties. Our next work party is on Saturday 13th September, and we are putting on a Fungal Foray on the 5th October.
If you would like to join our email mailing list, please get in touch by leaving a comment on this website – you should be able to see a comment button at the bottom of this page.
A beautiful evening and twenty nine adults and eleven children gathered in Alwoodley Village Green car park at 7.45 pm for a bat walk led by Leeds City Council rangers, Rachel Todner and Joe Craig-Jackson.
To begin the event, the Chair of Friends of Adel Woods gave a brief address describing the various habitats in Adel Woods, and the work done by our volunteers, before introducing Rachel and Joe. We then made our way along Crag Lane to the peace and quiet of Old Leo’s car park.
Rachel and Joe addressing demonstrating how to use bat detectors
Once in Old Leo’s car park Rachel and Joe distributed bat detectors and cards listing the species of bat that can be found living in the UK.
Two bat detectors
An introduction to bats and bat detectors
When we all had bat detectors, Rachel gave an introductory talk about bats. She explained that contrary to popular belief, bats have good eyesight. However, because they hunt at dusk and night they have evolved an echolocation method of hunting and navigating around their environment. They send out high pitched sounds and use the echos which bounce off insects and objects in their surroundings to locate obstacles and their prey.
She explained that there are seventeen breeding species of bat in the UK which each make echolocation sounds at specific pitches, and this is one of the ways that we can tell which bat species are flying in the vicinity.
Because the echolocation sounds made by bats are too high pitched for humans to hear, we need to use bat detectors to pick up the sounds and convert them to a pitch we can hear. By adjusting the detection frequency of the detector we are able to tell which bats are around.
A table showing the echolocation frequencies of UK bats
The batwalk
From Old Leo’s we made our way into the woods to have a look at some bat boxes made and put up by Friends of Adel Woods in 2010 to provide roosting. The chair of FOAW explained that these differ from tit boxes in that there is no round hole in the front of the box. Instead, the back board of the box extends down below the box and bats land on this and crawl up into the box through a slit in the base.
FOAW put up seven bat boxes – four on one tree and three on another, each of the boxes facing in different directions so that the bats could choose which box they preferred to roost in. We do not know if the bat boxes have been used as it is a criminal offence to look into them.
One of the bat boxes made and put up by FOAW in January 2010
From the bat boxes we made our way along Crag Lane to the picnic area where we were excited to see our first bats of the evening. The frequency of their echolocation, 55kHz, indicated they were soprano pipistrelle bats.
From the picnic area we continued to Adel Crag, which the sculptor Henry Moore said was one of his sources of inspiration (along with the slag heaps of Castleford!). There we saw a number of bats which we identified as soprano pipistrelle and common pipistrelle (45kHz).
From the Crag we made our way back along Crag Lane to the disused rugby field to the north of Crag Lane. Here we saw many bats, including soprano pipistrelle, pipistrelle and noctule bats (25kHz). Rachel also wondered if we saw a brown long eared bat in the middle of the field based on the frequency of its echolocation (48kHz) and its size.
Friends of Adel Woods bat detecting in the disused rugby field
Finally, at about 9.30 pm we made our way back along Crag Lane to the Village Green car park. On the way we picked up many calls from noctule bats.
If you would like to find out more about bats in the UK, have a look at the bat conservation trust website.
It was a very successful and enjoyable evening and we received some lovely messages of thanks from the participants.
“Thanks for arranging the bat walk last night. Very enjoyable.“
“Thank you for the very enjoyable bat walk last night!“
“Just wanted to thank you for running the bat walk, the kids and I had a blast.”
Join Friends of Adel Woods
We hope that you have enjoyed reading about our activities and would be delighted if you would like to join us.
Friends of Adel Woods were formed in 2009 to help maintain Adel Woods and encourage people to enjoy them. We meet one weekend morning a month to carry out various jobs or ”work parties”, and we also put on educational events such as bat walks, fungal forays and birdsong walks.
We are a very friendly group and welcome new members who want to help preserve our special woods, enjoy fresh air and exercise in the woods, and make new friends. If you would like to take part in our activities, keep an eye on our Home Page and come along to one of our work parties.
If you would like to join our email mailing list, please get in touch by leaving a comment on this website – you should be able to see a comment button at the bottom of this page.
This morning fourteen of us met at the Slabbering Baby entrance to the woods on Buckstone Road. We had two tasks scheduled: litterpicking, and working with ranger Joe Craig-Jackson on the orchid meadow.
Litterpicking
Four of us chose to pick up litter – three working together, and one choosing to work on her own (with her dog). Here are their reports:
“Three of us and we collected three bags of litter. Dave left us to collect litter on his way back home and two of us walked to the picnic tables, Adel Crag and the Stairfoot Lane Car Park. It was quite challenging with the wind gusts so the bin bag hoops proved their worth. There was very little litter on the main paths and car parks – most was in the woods adjacent to paths. There was plenty of dog poop, mercifully bagged, and the usual plastic bottles, cans and paper waste.”
“This morning I went from Buckstone Road to the village green. There was a fair bit of rubbish around – mainly cans, plastic bottles, sweet wrappers and a couple of wipes!! From there through the woods to Devil’s Rock and then to St Gemma’s field. I targeted an area tucked away in the middle, previously used as a chill out zone – lots of rubbish etc. Returned to the Orchid Field with one large bag of rubbish.“
The orchid meadow (aka the cricket meadow)
Joe going through the Risk Assessment before we start work
Ten of us chose to work on the orchid meadow (also known as the cricket meadow).
Friends of Adel Woods have been looking after the meadow since 2014. It is home to many beautiful common spotted orchids which flower in June andJuly each year, as well as other wild flowers. To keep it in good condition, we need to mow it in August each year and rake off the mowings. If we don’t, the meadow will be soon be taken over by brambles, bracken and saplings – which was its state in 2014.
This year, Leeds City Council rangers Rachel Todner and Louise Gibson mowed the meadow a week or so ago, and raked the mowings into long piles to allow them to dry out in the sun and drop any seeds.
However, they left an area of the meadow unmown so that Joe could show members of Friends of Adel Woods how to use a scythe. Several of our group chose this option and they made a good job of it.
Gathering up the mowings – and in the distance, learning to use a scythe
The rest of us raked the mowings into piles and transported them into compost heaps in the woodland edge.
We also took the opportunity to pull up a lot of Himalayan Balsam from the woodland margin around the meadow.
One of our compost heaps
We finished working just after 12 noon and Joe got out the brew kit and some biscuits to provide much needed refreshment.
Some of our happy team
Join Friends of Adel Woods
We hope that you have enjoyed reading about our activities and would be delighted if you would like to join us.
Friends of Adel Woods were formed in 2009 to help maintain Adel Woods and encourage people to enjoy them. We meet one weekend morning a month to carry out various jobs or ”work parties”, and we also put on educational events such as bat walks, fungal forays and birdsong walks.
We are a very friendly group and welcome new members who want to help preserve our special woods, enjoy fresh air and exercise in the woods, and make new friends. If you would like to take part in our activities, keep an eye on our Home Page and come along to one of our work parties.
If you would like to join our email mailing list, please get in touch by leaving a comment on this website – you should be able to see a comment button at the bottom of this page.
Friends of Adel Woods 