Friends of Adel Woods

An extraordinary 14 Friends – an extraordinary  number and 14 extraordinary people – took part in an ad hoc litterpick this morning and made a really good job picking up many bags of litter.  Thank you to everyone – the woods look a lot better than before, and I am sure that the hedgehogs, squirrels and other animals in the woods really appreciate the improvement!

Someone had generously dumped 3 old televisions at the side of Crag Lane which we decided to leave till a later date.

Seven of us spent the afternoon putting up 19 nest boxes along the Meanwood Valley Trail and a bat box (with the batboxes we put up last year).

We put up 1 robin box, 1 starling box and 17 titboxes – with a variety of sizes of entrance holes.

An enjoyable morning making 19 tit boxes under the expert tutellage of Steve Joul!

A big thank you to Leeds City Council for providing the wood, to Andrew Jellings for cutting the planks to the correct size, and to Ian Hamilton for drilling all the holes.

But chiefly a big thank you to everyone who turned up and made the morning a great success.

A very happy and enjoyable afternoon surveying the boxes which we put up in January.  Of twelve boxes inspected, eight had nests in them

I know the lyrics are slightly wrong, but we had a great morning making Christmas garlands and yule logs under the tutellage of Steve Joul.  Even your reporter, who only managed to hammer in one nail when making bird boxes in January,  was able to complete a very presentable garland which is now hanging by the front door.

Thanks are due to Old Leo’s Rugby Club who gave us the use of their bar and tea and coffee making facilities.

Diane Gregory of West Yorkshire Bat Group gave a wonderful talk on bats to an enthusiastic audience of Friends.

There are 17 or 18 species of bat in the UK of which two, the common Pipistrelle and the Noctule, are known to  frequent Adel Woods – we know because we saw and heard them on our Bat Walk with Steve Joul on 14 August (see the blog entry for that evening). If you go into the woods in Spring and Summer you will have the thrilling sight of them flitting around at the margin of the trees and open spaces. If you are really lucky you may well have them in your garden.  At Eccup reservoir you may well see a third species, Daubenton’s bat, which hunts over water. However, you won’t see any bats at the moment, because they are all on  sab-bat-ical – hibernating until the Spring!

Bats are a really important indicator of the health of our environment and wildlife – they are the top predators of common nocturnal insects, and are very sensitive to such things as landscape change, intensive agriculture, pesticides.  Unfortunately, the bat population in the UK has declined by about 75% over the last 100 years.  The Friends have started to help bats by putting up some bat boxes last January.  We want a healthy bat population in Alwoodley!

All bats are protected in the UK and it is illegal to disturb a bat roost. You may well have bats in and around the crevices of your house.  If you do, count yourself lucky, though the chances are that you will not know because they are very unobtrusive creatures – you can get about 200 Pipistrelle’s into a shoe box!

Should you find a bat in distress, or want to do some work on your house and think that you have bats living there, contact the National Bat Helpline 0845 1300 228 or the Bat  Conservation Trust http://www.bats.org.uk/ who will help you  and give you advice on how you can carry out your work while remaining within the law.

Our next bat event will be in the Summer when – with Diane’s help – we shall investigate whether the bat boxes we put up last January have attracted any bats.

A busy morning of varied tasks.

Scraping the mud off paths by the Slabbering Baby and along Crag Lane.
Litter picking – four bags of rubbish collected.
Clearing fallen trees from the woodland paths (see the Gallery).
Cleaning and surveying bird boxes.

A meeting in the woods with Steve Joul and Roger Brookes of Leeds CC and Craig Spencer of British Trust for Conservation Volunteers to:

•    clarify the route of rights of way and how they can be maintained; and

•     to dentify tasks which BTCV can do for us because they are too big for a Saturday or Sunday morning.

A very productive morning.

Not actually breaking rocks, but uprooting saplings on Adel Moor to enable the heather to re-establish itself.  Apparently, there is so much heather seed in the soil that the moor will regenerate itself quite quickly.

While some of us were labouring on the moor, a team of four Friends led by Steve Joul were clearing reed sweet grass from the pond.

Another beautiful morning when we had great company and we went home for a hearty lunch with a sense of something worthwhile accomplished.

  “Friends of Adel Woods have branches everywhere!”

Another bumper turn out on a grey wet morning.  Ten of us spent an hour picking up litter, and then most of us adjourned to do some path clearance and to clear vegetation off the slabbering baby.

A special thank you to Old Leo’s rugby club who offered us free tea, coffee and a bacon sandwich – an offer taken up and by several of us and appreciated by us all.