Friends of Adel Woods

The weather forecast for today was rain all morning. At 8 am it was beautiful with a clear sky.  At 10 am, when we met on Buckstone Road it was raining.  Nevertheless we had a good turnout of eight stalwart Friends.

We donned our hi-vis jackets and set off to work.  Our new jackets are great: they turn us into an efficient team (Norwich or Arsenal?), they advertise the Friends of Adel Woods, and they make us all visible from a distance – very handy for the management!

Two of us set off litter picking, and did a great job.

One of set off to clear mud from the area in front of the Slabbering Baby before joining the rest of the Friends on the moor to clear saplings and brambles.

The clearing of mud from the Slabbering Baby proved a difficult task.  It was not the quantity of the mud, so much as the fact that there was no hard surface to work to:  the risk was that in clearing mud, one was simply digging a big hole!  Providing a hard surface may be something which we focus on in coming months.

Up on the moor, the rain stopped and the Friends worked tirelessly and cleared many brambles.  

“Say not the struggle naught availeth, the labour and the wounds are vain.”

The Meanwood Trail: 7 April 2018

The Alwoodley Sphinx in the Snow: 18th March 2018

What a difference a week makes! We had to postpone today’s task from last Sunday due to heavy snow, but today we could not have hoped for a better day.

Two of our party set about picking litter, while the rest of us headed off to clear paths.  Note the fine looking hi-vis jackets worn by all our Friends!  Their first outing!

Our first stop was a path which leads down from Adel pond towards the bridge over Meanwood Beck.  This was badly overgrown with holly but in half an hour we were able to make a big difference.

Whilst there we found four charity bags which were full of….charity bags – hidden deep in the heart of some holly bushes. A year or two ago we found about seven bags of the same charity’s bags in roughly the same area, so we probably missed them.  Clearly, whoever put the bags there did not want people to know that he or she had dumped them: rather than dump them in the car park, the miscreant had carried them several hundred yards into the woods and climbed through vicious holly branches to hide them.

From there we headed up the Meanwood Valley Trail to a path on the left which is signposted as a public footpath, but which was almost choked with holly.

We cleared a way through to the bottom of the path and also cleared holly from the Meanwood Valley Trail itself.

Finally, we cleared some of the mud from the trail.  The mud is basically the remains of leaf litter and beneath the mud there is in many places a good firm surface of stone.  Rob also enjoyed creating a little stream bed to allow water to drain from the trail.

All in all a very satisfying morning’s work.

Today was our first outing with our new Hi-Vis Jackets, purchased with a Members Improvement in the Community and Environment (MICE) grant from Councillor Neil Buckley of Leeds City Council.

They are great!  Not only did we feel like a team but it also made it a lot easier to find one another!

Before: the 13th January 2018

When we were surveying the nest boxes on 13 January, we found that a very large tree had fallen across the Meanwood Valley Trail between the picnic area and Adel Pond.

The tree was far too big for FOAW to even begin to tackle it with bow saws and so a request was sent to Leeds City Council Forestry Department to clear it.

It was great to discover this morning, on surveying the Meanwood Valley Trail, that the tree had been sawn up and the trail is clear again.

Thank you Leeds City Council Forestry Department!

After: the 9th February 2018

Today, David, Rob and your correspondent joined Roger Brookes of Leeds City Council to walk the Meanwood Valley Trail from the Stairfoot Lane car park to the Seven Arches aqueduct.  This is the stretch of the trail which falls within the area looked after by Friends of Adel Woods.

Our mission was to determine whether additional way markers are needed to help guide walkers using the trail.

In 2010 Friends of Adel Woods spent a number of days painting yellow way marker arrows on rocks and stones – see for example our blog entry for 26 June 2010.  Our arrows are still visible, though becoming fainter and harder to see.

Our conclusion today was that we need half a dozen additional 5′ posts with arrows and MVT logos.

A boulder on the Meanwood Valley Trail bearing one of the arrows painted by FOAW in 2010.

Despite a very chilly start and a very unpromising weather forecast, we had another great turn out of eight of us this morning for litter picking and clearing brambles from the Hospice Woodland.

We met in the Stairfoot Lane car park and Judith and Tina litter picked while the rest of us headed up to the Hospice Woodland where we cleared brambles growing over the young trees.

As time passed, it began to snow more persistently and gradually the numbers diminished as people left for other commitments (or warmer climes) until, at 11.45 am we called it a day.

Despite the weather, another satisfying and successful morning.

See our previous blog entry for Saturday 13 January for  more information about the nest boxes put up by Friends of Adel Woods and the results of the first part of our survey.

After Saturday, we nominally had nine boxes to survey – nominally because two seem to have disappeared without trace over the years.

Despite an inch of snow over night, and a forecast of further snow or sleet this morning, Steve and I met up to finish the job, despite my misgivings.  However, I need not have worried: it turned out to be a lovely day – the snow quickly thawed, it didn’t rain, and the sun even came out!

We surveyed six tit boxes and the tree creeper nest box.

Four of the tit boxes contained completed tit nests, and the other two contained what seemed to be incomplete nests.  One of the tit boxes had been used by nuthatches because they had started to seal the gaps around the lid with mud.  However, the nest inside was a typical tit nest, not a nuthatch nest, so it looks as if the nuthatches may have been driven off by some aggressive blue tits or, more likely, great tits.  Interestingly, exactly the same thing happened with this nest box last year.

Tree creeper nest box

The treecreeper box is a bit unusual.  Tree creepers are so called because they creep up the side of tree, looking for bugs to eat (incidentally, unlike nuthatches, they can’t creep down trees, and when they get to the top of  a tree they have to fly off to the bottom of the next one).  They nest high up in small gaps behind the bark of trees, and the tree creeper nest box is intended to offer something similar to the gap behind bark.  It is about twice the depth of a tit box, and the entrance is on the side of the box, near the bark of the tree.  Here is a link to a nice video of a tree creeper nesting in a hide: tree creeper.  Click on the video “tree creeper huddle”.

The tree creeper box was used for nesting, but the nest in the bottom of the box was a typical tit nest.  Looking at the photograph of the tree creeper box, it is amazing to think of young tit fledglings having to climb a foot (or 30 centimetres) up the inside of the nest box to reach the exit to the outside world.

Another very interesting and enjoyable morning.

Today we started our 8th annual survey of the forty two nest boxes which we have put up since 2010.

We had an enthusiastic team of six, including Steve Joul (senior ranger with Leeds Parks and Countryside), and we were out from 10 am to 4 pm.  It was a chilly start, but it warmed up during the day.  In many ways it was a perfect day:  dry and no wind!

The nest boxes are positioned:

• in the woods to the north of Old Leo’s rugby club
• along Crag Lane between the rugby club and Adel Crag; and
• along the Meanwood Valley Trail from the picnic area near the Crag down to the Seven Arches.

Immediately to the north of Old Leo’s club house, on the other side of Crag Lane, there are some nest boxes with very large holes in the front.  These are tit boxes put up by Steve Joul 25 years ago, and they are not part of our survey. The large holes are due to the action of woodpeckers over the years.

Friends of Adel Woods have put up thirty six tit boxes, five robin boxes and one treecreeper box.

A tit box is the typical nest box with a hole in the front.  The ones which we have put up have holes of varying sizes between 28mm (suitable for blue tits) and 32 mm (suitable for blue tits, great tits, sparrows and nuthatches).  We have positioned these on trees between about ten and twenty feet from the ground.

A robin box is the same size as a tit box but, instead of having a small round entrance hole, the upper half of the front of the box is completely open.  Robins are shy and secretive nesters and their nest boxes are placed a few feet from the ground in the middle of holly bushes.

Tree creeper nest box

The treecreeper box is a bit unusual.  Tree creepers are so called because they creep up the side of tree, looking for bugs to eat (incidentally, unlike nuthatches, they can’t creep down trees, and when they get to the top of  a tree they have to fly off to the bottom of the next one).  They nest high up in small gaps behind the bark of trees and the tree creeper nest box is intended to offer something similar to the gap behind bark.  It is about twice the depth of a tit box, and the entrance is on the side of the box, near the bark of the tree.  Here is a link to a nice video of a tree creeper nesting in a hide: tree creeper

Today we surveyed and cleaned 32 nest boxes.

As usual, nearly all of the tit boxes were used. The nests are made of moss, grass, dog hair and similar fibres.  Over the years (including this year) many tit nests contain luminous green manmade fibres.  The best we can come up with is that they are fibres from lost green tennis balls!  Some of the nest boxes contain unhatched eggs. If there is just one, it often seems to be smaller than a typical egg and it may be that it was not a viable egg.  In some cases there are more than one egg which indicates something dramatic may have happened.  In the picture of Steve examining the contents of a tit nest, we found seven unhatched eggs between two layers of nesting material, so it looks as if a nest was built, eggs laid, and something happened which caused the nest to be abandoned and a new nest built above it.

Excitingly, two of the tit boxes – including the last we surveyed today were used by nuthatches. One of the nest boxes – the one by the bridge between the Slabbering Baby and Adel Pond – was used by nuthatches last year.

You can tell when a nuthatch has used a tit box because it fills all the gaps between the lid and the sides and front of the box with mud.  Inside the nest is totally different from a tit nest: instead of a nest of moss, grass, dog hair and similar materials, with a saucer shape where the eggs are laid, the nest is made of bark chips – and looks rather like a layer of bran flakes in the bottom of the nest box!

Tit nest box used by Nuthatches: see the mud around the top of the sides and the nest made of bark chips

None of the robin boxes were used except for one which was full of unusual nesting material. It was not in the form of a bird’s nest and contained a lot of dry grass and leaves. The entrance to the nest seems to have been vigorously chewed:  was it used by a squirrel for roosting?

We didn’t reach the tree creeper nest box today:  see our entry for Wednesday 17th January to discover what we found!

Thank you to Steve Joul for guiding us through the survey, and thank you to everyone else who helped today.

Your correspondent is not looking for sympathy, but he had a shocking cold this morning, and as it was only a week before Christmas,  we had a short session – short in terms of time (10 am to 11.15 am), but long on achievement.

We had an excellent turn out, meeting in the Stairfoot Lane carpark.  While a handful of us went off litter picking, a merry band set off to clear the drainage pipe under Crag Lane near the picnic tables, and thence to repair and tidy up the Stairfoot Lane steps.

Near the picnic tables, there is a stretch of Crag Lane which was regularly impassable until  December 2012 (five years ago, almost to the day) when we put a drainage pipe under part of the track, and put several tons of hardcore over it.

The drainage pipe has worked a treat for five years but it had become blocked.  How blocked only became apparent when we started work.  The pipe was chocka with mud.  We had to cut down a small sapling and fashion a drainage rod to clear the pipe.  Having cleared the pipe, we dug a channel for water to run into the pipe and flow into the undergrowth below the path.

We then moved on to our second task:  repairing and tidying up Stairfoot Lane steps.

These were funded by Leeds City Council and installed by the British Trust for Conservation Volunteers in August 2012.  Friends of Adel Woods helped Steve Joul to extend the top end of the steps in October 2012.

After five years, some of the timber is beginning to rot, and we repaired one of the steps today, as well as clearing leaf litter from the whole length of the steps.

Having tidied up the steps we went our separate ways, and your correspondent retired to bed for four days.  He has now made a complete recovery.