Friends of Adel Woods

Well, chestnuts weren’t actually roasting on an open fire, and Jack Frost wasn’t nipping at our noses,  but it was time for making the Friends of Adel Woods celebrated Christmas wreaths!

We gathered together in the bar of Old Leo’s rugby club with masses of leylandii clippings, pine cones, plastic holly berries and bling, and set about exercising our creativity.

We are pleased to say that the making of the wreaths resulted in net contributions (after expenses) of £91.30 to FOAW funds.

Thank you to all who helped make the wreaths, to all who had a wreath, and thank you to Old Leo’s for letting us use the bar and providing us with tea and coffee.

It’s Twelfth night tomorrow, and the wreaths will be taken down – even though they last outside for months.  If you had a wreath, please return it to me at sometime in the next 11 months for recycling!

A very cold but beautiful morning in Adel Woods.

Today’s tasks were litter picking and clearing paths.  Twelve of us met in Old Leo’s car park – although two of our number only arrived later on due to buying tickets to see Peter Kay!  We had three new members which was very gratifying.

Having despatched the litter pickers to pick up litter (stating the obvious) the rest of us headed down to the Slabbering Baby, where we admired the new information board.

We then headed along the path which runs from the pond, towards Stairfoot Bridge, pruning back holly and pulling up brambles.  Where the path joins the stream we removed two tyres and a cast iron sack wheels which has mysteriously appeared in the stream – “mysteriously”, because it looks as if it has been in the stream for some time, but it was several hundred yards downstream from Stairfoot Lane.  It is hard to imagine that it could have been washed down by the current.

This brought us to 12 noon and triumphantly we headed to the Stairfoot Lane car park to discover that flytippers had dumped there seven or eight bags of potting compost – probably from a cannabis farm – and  an old shower cubicle.

A passerby reads the new information board at the Slabbering Baby

Your correspondent ventured down to the Slabbering Baby for the first time for a month or two and was delighted to discover that an information board has now been put up to tell it’s history.

I am also pleased to report that a steady stream of water was flowing out of the Baby’s mouth – a first in your correspondent’s experience.

Thank you to all involved in the refurbishment of the Slabbering Baby (see our entry for May 2017) and thank you to our local councillors who provided funding for the interpretation board, Douglas Louie of Leeds Parks and Countryside for designing it, and local historian Stephen Burt for checking the historical facts.

Adel Pond, 23 October 2016

Despite dire warnings of appalling conditions in the form of Storm Brian, a team of four turned out to help Steve Joul work on Adel Pond while two more stalwarts cleared litter – in particular around Crag Lane and the Devil’s Rock.

Unfortunately, your correspondent could not be there because he was lunching in Shropshire – where the wind was fierce and the rain torrential.  We therefore don’t have any pictures of the Friends at work today, and the pictures are from our archive.

Adel Pond is a beautiful spot, and home to a colony of palmate newts and common frogs.  The nearby streams run into it and it gradually silts up with sticks and mud each year.  TheFriends have dredged mud from it with Steve Joul every Autumn since 2009, the year of our formation.  At that time it was also full of an invasive garden plant, reed sweet grass, which we have managed to clear completely.

Next time you are in the woods, why not pop by the pond and commune with nature for a few minutes!

Thank you to Steve and all the Friends who helped today.

Adel Pond, 15 November 2009

Here is a list of the species of fungi which we found on today’s fungal foray with Steve Joul.

Steve Joul giving an introduction to the world of fungi

Yellow Stagshorn (Calocera viscosa)

One of the things that makes life so interesting is that there is always more to learn and there are always more fascinating things to discover about the world we live in.  This afternoon, Steve Joul led a group of explorers on a journey of discovery around Adel Woods, and all of the photographs you will find on this post were, believe it or not, taken in Adel Woods this afternoon.

Steve began our Fungal Foray by giving us a general introduction to the life cycle of mushrooms and toadstools.  One of our number had brought with him a selection of specimens collected in Wetherby this morning, and Steve handed these round for examination, while pointing out some of the features which help us to identify the differing species.

We then set off on a walk around the woods – starting off in Alwoodley Plantation, and then heading down to the cricket pitches.  We found many interesting species, some of which you can see in the following photographs which were all taken by our member Cathy.

Beefsteak Fungus  (Fistula hepatica)

Lumpy Bracket (Trametes gibbosa)

The iconic Fly Agaric  (Amanita mascara) found in the grass verge of the track down to the cricket pavilion.

Believed to be the Stump Puffball (Lycoperdon pyriforma)

In all we recorded 28 species.  If you would like a complete list, please see our next blog entry.

Another fine day in the woods. A good turn out of about a dozen Friends.  Three of us went litter picking while the rest of us went path clearing.

It was our first path clearing session for some time because the committee decided that this year we would focus on bashing and pulling bracken on the moor.

The path clearers made their way along Crag Lane from the Rugby Club to Stairfoot Lane car park.  We then worked on the path up to the hospice woodland, chatted to someone chilling out to dance music in a clearing, and finally cleared the path leading into the wood from Stairfoot Lane.  The stone monument marking the entrance to the wood was overgrown and we cleared it and the first twenty to thirty yards of the path.

We are looking forward to seeing the daffodils coming up around the monument and along the  side of the path in only three or four months.

In the meantime, the litter pickers did a fantastic job, clearing bagfuls of rubbish.

This This evening FOAW had a special event – our first ever Moth and Bat watch led by Steve Joul.  Steve has led bat watches for FOAW before – the last time 85 people came on it! – but this was the very first time that we combined it with a Moth watch.

We met in the car park of Old Leo’s at 8.10 pm and we had an excellent turn out of about 25 adults and children.

By the time your correspondent arrived, the event was already underway.  His neighbour, Paul Morris, a well known ornithologist, and now a keen lepidopterist, brought some (living) specimens he had trapped in his garden, and they were being passed around with great interest.

Steve gave an interesting introduction to the evening and showed us the two moth traps he had brought with him.  One was brand new and Steve and assistants had to work out how to put it together!  This was the one we used this evening.  Basically, a moth trap is an ultra violet light which attracts moths to crawl or fall down a funnel from which they can’t get back out.  Steve packed the trap with old egg boxes because moths like to snuggle down in them!

Old Leo’s bar had kindly given us permission to plug the moth trap into their power supply, and as dusk fell, we set off in pursuit of bats, leaving the moth trap switched on and under the care of our treasurer Judith.

Steve had brought plenty of bat detectors with him for us all to share, and we headed off into Crag Lane and the field which used to be the juniors rugby pitch. We did a circuit of that field before heading to the picnic area, and then Stairfoot Lane car park.

It was an enjoyable walk and we had a few sightings and soundings of bats, but they must have been playing away this evening.

After an hour or so of bat hunting, we returned to Old Leo’s to find that Judith was frozen and ready to go home.  However, the moth trap was safe and sound.

Large Yellow Underwing – photo courtesy of website of ukmoths.org.uk

Steve opened up the moth trap to much excitement and we found a number of moths inside.

There were three specimens of the large yellow underwing, which is one of the most abundant of our larger moths.  There were other moths but they flew off before we had the chance to see them – the younger members of our party were very excited to explore what was in the trap!

Overall, we enjoyed a very interesting and fun evening,  and we must express our gratitude to Steve for suggesting this event, leading us on it and bringing the moth traps and bat detectors, to Paul Morris for bringing moths for us to see, to Tony at Old Leo’s for letting us plug into Old Leo’s power supply, to Judith for protecting the moth trap, and to all who attended and made the evening a great success.

As a post script, Michael, one of our longstanding Friends, went home and found an exciting caterpillar in his garden.  Here is his email and photographs.

Feel free to pass on to Steve. Got home and went down the garden to find this beauty on the rosebay willowherb on my overgrown veg plot. I think it might have to stay overgrown from now on. Won’t be pulling it up this year. To think I nearly cleared it last week!! My first ever hawk moth caterpillar. Elephant Hawk moth I think. Humongous caterpillar. Thank you both for organising tonight.

A fine day and a good turn out.  Two of us went off litter picking, while the rest of us went off to Adel Moor to bash and pull bracken.

The committee decided that we would make a determined effort to get on top of the bracken on the moor and this was our third outing this Summer.

The first thing we found, was that an area which we cleared of bracken earlier this year had sprouted lots of new growth – as shown in this photograph.

This demonstrated just how persistent bracken is.  Undaunted, the Friends quickly set to work and removed all this new growth.

Equally positively, it is possible to make a big inroad into the bracken in the space of two hours.

Here are before and after pictures of the same spot taken about an hour and a half apart – and this is only a small part of the total achievement of the morning.

It was gratifying to find that under the bracken, there is still – at the moment – quite a lot of healthy looking heather.

The weather was fine until a few minutes before 12 noon when – out of nowhere – a torrential rain shower soaked us all.

Still this is what we are striving to achieve – the preservation of a wonderful heath with associated flora and fauna.

Another beautiful day.

A small but enthusiastic group met in Buckstone Road and separated into the litter pickers and the bracken bashers.  The litter pickers set off into the woods.  The bracken bashers set off to Adel Moor where we bashed or pulled bracken, and pulled up tree saplings.

We are successfully restoring Adel Moor as a small but viable piece of heathland with a resident population of lizards.  Unfortunately, we didn’t see any today.

The problem with bracken is that it suppresses other plants which we want to have on Adel Moor – like heather.  The good news is that in certain areas of the bracken, there is still a healthy growth of heather beneath the bracken – as shown in the picture above.

Four of the Adel Woods Bracken Bashers