Putting up a nest box for blue tits on the Meanwood Valley Trail
When we surveyed the FOAW nest boxes on the 13th and 14th January, we found that three needed replacing, but only had one spare nest box to put up in their place. The committee therefore agreed to purchase two Schwegler tit boxes from Ark Wildlife. We purchased one with a 32 mm hole which is suitable for blue tits, great tits and nuthatches, and one with a smaller 26mm hole which is suitable just for blue tits.
They arrived yesterday and Steve Joul and your correspondent put them up this morning. We already have one Schwegler nest box near Old Leo’s clubhouse and we have been very impressed with it. It was donated to us in 2010 by our member Tina and it is very well designed and as good as new.
The blue tit box on an oak tree by the Meanwood Valley Trail
This morning we put up the first nest box on the Meanwood Valley Trail about 100 metres north of the Seven Arches aqueduct. While there, we took the opportunity to have a look to see how the Seven Arches looks following work carried out by its owner, Yorkshire Water, to remove trees and brambles growing on the structure. A few weeks earlier, our local ranger, David Preston, and the Meanwood Valley Volunteer rangers had cleared scrub from the Scotland Wood side.
The Seven Arches photographed from the Scotland Wood sideand looking good!
We put up the second nest box on the Meanwood Valley Trail just north of Adel Pond.
Putting up a tit box on the Meanwood Valley Trail north of Adel Pond
The Schwegler nest boxes are made of a mixture of woodchips, concrete and clay and are long-lasting- expected to last for up to 25 years. We are looking forward to see how our new nest boxes have fared when we survey and clean them next January.
Snowdrops by the side of Buckstone Road
On the way home afterwards it was a pleasure to see the snowdrops by the stream running alongside Buckstone Road.
About 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 ”work parties”, and we also put on educational events. 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. Please get in touch by leaving a comment on this website if you would like to take part in our activities.
A glorious sunrise over Alwoodley at 8 am, after several days of intense cold.
This morning, five of us met in the Stairfoot Lane carpark at 10 am. Although the weather had started to thaw, the carpark was still a dangerous sheet of ice.
Our goals this morning were path clearing and litterpicking.
Clearing holly along the “middle” path
We all set off together to the steps down to the stream and took the path to the left about four steps down. As we went, we trimmed back holly and removed as far as we could branches which had fallen across the path.
Just before we reached Adel Bog, we found a couple of trees had fallen across the path. They were too big for us to tackle, but we removed branches which were not supporting the trees. As we did so, we found an old blackbirds nest among the branches.
A blackbird’s nest in Adel Woods
When we reached the Slabbering Baby, we went down to Spring Hill bridge and made our way back along the path alongside the stream all the way to Stairfoot Cottage.
Clearing obstacles along the path by the stream
While we were making our way along the paths, Peter picked up a bag of litter.
Thank you to all who took part this morning!
About 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 “work parties”, and we also put on educational events. 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. Please get in touch by leaving a comment on this website if you would like to take part in our activities.
The Seven Arches aqueduct, with a fallen tree in the foreground.
A lovely day for part two of our annual nest box clean and survey. This morning we had a team of six and we decided to complete our survey by starting at the Seven Arches and making our way up the Meanwood Valley Trail.
When we reached the Seven Arches we found a huge tree had been blown over by the recent high winds, but were rewarded by a fine view of the aqueduct following recent clearance work carried out by David Preston and his team of Meanwood Valley Volunteer Rangers.
The morning session….
This blog post will focus on what we found during our work today. You can find a lot of information about the purpose of cleaning the nest boxes, the birds that use them, and the kind of things we find, in yesterday’s blog entry, which can be found here.
This morning we cleaned and surveyed twelve tit boxes and one treecreeper box.
Of the twelve tit boxes, ten contained tit nests (of which three at least were blue tit nests), one contained a nuthatch nest, and we don’t seem to have made a record of what we found in the twelfth. The treecreeper box contained a lot of leaves indicating it had been used by a squirrel for roosting.
A nuthatch nest in one of our woodstone boxes
Nuthatch nests are very different from tit nests. Nuthatches will use tit boxes but usually plaster around any gaps with mud, and rather than using moss, grass and feathers as nesting material, nuthatches use material chips of bark, so the nest looks like a bowl of branflakes! The nest we found today was sparse and there was not a lot of material so it is possible it was not completed. You can see a better example of a nuthatch nest in one of our wooden nest boxes photographed in January 2019 here.
The treecreeper box is a bit unusual. Treecreepers are so called because they creep up the side of tree, looking for bugs to eat. 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. We have found a tit nest in our treecreeper box in previous years, but this year we found a lot of leaves indicating that it had been used for roosting by a squirrel. You can see a photograph of the treecreeper box here
One first this year was that we found a large amount of “sawdust” in box 39, and a large hole in the back of the box. Since the back of the box was against the trunk of the tree, the hole could not have been made from the outside by a woodpecker and it must have been made from the inside by a woodmouse.
Looking expectantly to see what will be in the box!Cleaning one of our nest boxesInspecting the job!
We retired for lunch, a piece of Christmas cake and a comfort break at about 1.25 pm.
The afternoon session….
Re-energised after lunch, and raring to go!
This afternoon, starting from just below the Slabbering Baby, we made our way up the Meanwood Valley Trail and surveyed the final seven nest boxes – six tit boxes and one robin box.
The robin box had not been used. The tit boxes had all been used though one nest appeared not to have been completed. One nest contained five unhatched eggs and another four unhatched eggs. However, since great tits lay seven to nine eggs and blue tits eight to twelve eggs, the nests may well have been successful.
Cleaning nest box 29 at the Slabbering BabyThe nest and four unhatched eggs in nest box 42Measuring the entrance hole on one of our wooden boxes
Friends of Adel Woods made and put up our wooden boxes under the tuition of Steve Joul in January 2010 and January 2011. We also purchased and put up a number of woodstone boxes in 2013. The woodstone boxes are made of a mixture of cement and sawdust. The advantages of woodstone boxes is that they do not rot and are usually easier to clean. On the other hand, they are very heavy!
Cleaning out one of our woodstone boxesWinding up at 4.30 pm
In summary
Yesterday and today we surveyed and cleaned out forty one nest boxes – thirty six tit boxes, four robin boxes and one treecreeper box. Apart from one nest box, for which we do not seem to have made a record, all of the tit boxes were used last Spring. One of the tit boxes was used by a pair of nuthatches. None of the robin boxes had been used by robins, but two had been used by tits for nesting and two by squirrels for roosting. The treecreeper box had been used by a squirrel for roosting.
Thank you to everyone who helped over the weekend: thanks to Steve for letting us use his ladder; and thanks to Andrew who transported the ladder to Alwoodley!
About 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 or “work parties”, and we also put on educational events. 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. Please get in touch by leaving a comment on this website if you would like to take part in our activities.
A fine but cold day for day one of our annual survey and clean of our nest boxes in Adel Woods. At 10 am we had an amazing turnout of nine people - and later on twelve when three more people joined us in the woods!
We have thirty eight tit boxes and four robin boxes in Adel Woods, so we had our work cut out! Tit boxes are the familiar nest boxes with a round hole in the front. Robins will not use tit boxes and prefer a box with a large opening at the front (as shown below) placed near the ground – or not to use a nest box at all.
We need to clean the nest boxes because tits and robins do not re-use nests from previous years. In 2021 we were unable to clean out the nest boxes due to the covid lockdown and when we surveyed the nest boxes in January 2022 we found that in Spring 2021 nests had been built on top of the previous year’s nests. This probably happens all the time in natural nesting holes, but it is not a good start for young chicks because the old nesting material is frequently full of fleas and mites, and sometimes is very wet.
A robin box made by Friends of Adel Woods – note the large entrance.
Our morning’s work
We set off down Crag Lane and then up the “diagonal” path on the right hand side of Crag Lane, just before Old Leo’s car park. We paused at the entrance to the path to have a look at some Yellow Brain fungus (see yesterday’s blog post) and then started work cleaning our first nest box, number 17.
FOAW’s tit boxes have three different sizes of entrance hole. The two larger sizes, 28mm or 32mm, allow access to blue tits, great tits or nuthatches. The smallest entrance hole, 25mm, permits access only for blue tits. Coal tits may use nest boxes, but prefer a nest box only a metre or so above the ground so they do not use our tit boxes which are all at least three metres from the ground.
Nest box 17 seemed to contain two typical tit nests made of moss and grass – a great tit nest containing two unhatched eggs, and, on top of it, a blue tit nest containing one unhatched egg. Blue tit and great tit eggs look very similar, but great tit eggs are slightly bigger (17.5mm x 13.5mm) than blue tit eggs (15.6mm x 12mm).
Replacing the damp proofing on box number 17
We have covered all our wooden tit boxes with damp proofing plastic to keep them dry. This has been very successful over the years, but the plastic gets holes where pecked by the birds and this year we had to replace or patch up many of the nest boxes.
A typical tit nest made of moss, feathers and grass found in box 18
This morning we surveyed eleven tit boxes and two robin boxes. Ten tit boxes had nests inside them, and one a partly built tit nest. Some had one or two unhatched eggs concealed in the nesting material but since great tits lay seven to nine eggs and blue tits eight to twelve eggs, we infer that most of the nests were successful even though some eggs did not hatch. One nest contained the skeleton of a fully formed bird – probably a chick, but perhaps an adult. One contained a sweet chestnut shell, indicating that after the tits departed a wood mouse moved in for a while.
Turning to the robin boxes, one contained lots of leaves and had clearly been used by a squirrel for roosting, while the other contained a partly formed tit nest.
A blackbird nest at the base of a downey birch
One of the most exciting finds was made by Steve Joul when he found a blackbird nest near the ground at the back of the tree on which nest box number 8 was hanging.
No report on our nest box surveys is complete without a photo of Steve climbing a ladder!Nest box material well and truly processed by insects and containing larvae or maggotsViewing “Tina’s nest box” – a posh Schwegler box near Old Leo’s clubhouse
We continued working till about 1.20pm when we adjourned for lunch and a piece of Christmas cake. We had surveyed the nest boxes in Alwoodley Plantation, the boxes on the path running north adjacent to the disused rugby pitch, and the nest boxes on Crag Lane behind the rugby clubhouse.
Our afternoon session
Five of us resumed work at about 2.30pm and surveyed the nest boxes along Crag Lane from the rugby club to the picnic area, and then started to make our way down the Meanwood Valley Trail. surveying and cleaning nine nest boxes – eight tit boxes and one robin box.
The robin box contained a tit nest and leaves on top of it suggesting that a squirrel had used it for roosting. Of the tit boxes, seven contained a nest, and one contained moss which looked very fresh suggested that it may have been put there this year, even though it would be early for tits to start nesting.
A tit nest made in part with man-made fibres – probably from tennis balls
One of the striking features which we always find in tit nests is the use of man-made materials – probably the covering of green, yellow or orange tennis balls – to make the nest.
Black “witches butter” fungus and hairy curtain crust fungus on a tree stump
A propos of nothing we found these excellent examples of fungi this afternoon.
Time for a cup of tea!
We finished work at 4.35 as it was getting too dark to see.
In summary, during today’s survey we found that all the tit boxes were used. The nesting material in some tit boxes was dry, but in some it was very wet indeed – perhaps not surprising in view of the recent months of seemingly relentless heavy rain. Fortunately, today we spruced up twenty one nest boxes for this year’s broods.
Several of the nests contained droppings, indicating that the nest box had been used for roosting, as nesting birds do not defecate in the nest and clean out droppings from chicks.
Thank you to everyone who helped with today’s workparty!
To read more, have a look at tomorrow’s blog entry for day two of our annual nest box survey and clean.
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. We are a very friendly group and welcome new members who want to make new friends and enjoy getting out in the woods.
In the recent storms. a large number of trees in Adel Woods seem to have fallen over, or lost a branch. This one had fallen across the entrance to the path near Old Leo’s which leads up into Alwoodley Plantation – the path where we usually begin our annual nest box survey, due to start tomorrow. So a quick trip out to clear the fallen timber.
While there, I came across this spectacular fungus – which was very wobbly when the branch was moved. An email to Steve Joul revealed that it is Yellow Brain, latin name tremella mesenterica. Tremella is latin for wobbly jelly, and mesenteric means middle intestine. It feeds on another fungus, peniophora, that causes the branch to be rotten.
Further up the path there were further obstacles – a fallen branch and holly growing across the path. There were also cleared to allow Steve to carry his ladder up the path!
A wintry surprise this morning when we woke to find half an inch of snow on the ground. Nevertheless, we had a clear blue sky which meant it was a beautiful crisp morning.
Our local ranger, David Preston, and his fellow ranger, Heather Wagstaffe, had scheduled this morning for carrying out some trimming of the trees on the southern boundary of Adel Bog and requested the help of Friends of Adel Woods in using the off-cuts to make a “dead hedge”.
Adel Bog is a special habitat in Adel Woods: home to a healthy population of heath spotted orchids, bog asphodel, rushes, flag irises, cotton grass, tormentil and crossed leaf heath, to name a few plants found there. Friends of Adel Woods have done a lot of work over the years to preserve it and improve its condition – removing brambles, tree saplings and bracken and I am pleased to say that this Autumn and Winter the bog is looking great. It is the wettest it has been for years – every footstep risks sinking six inches into the mud!
Bog asphodel on Adel Bog, June 2014
The purpose of trimming the trees was to increase the open area of the bog, to create a clear boundary, and to reduce the problem of trees dropping seeds into the bog, and thus turning the bog into woodland.
Five Friends responded to David’s call for help, and joined David and Heather at 11.40 am, by which time they had completed their work and were ready for the clear up.
We worked till 1 pm using some of the off-cuts to make stakes for future dead hedging around the bog, and using the rest to create a dead hedge to make a clear boundary along about 10 metres of the southern perimeter.
Adel bog, showing the dead hedging on the southern boundary
A dead hedge is a barrier made of natural materials, usually held in place with stakes, though on this occasion, due to time constraints, we wove the materials between the trees around the edge of the bog. Whilst the hedge is called a dead hedge, it is possible for off-cuts to take root or for plants to grow within it, so that it becomes a living hedge.
The purpose of creating a barrier around the bog is to keep it safe from disturbance, particularly from dogs whose droppings are very damaging to the bog flora and fauna.
At completion of our work, we put a couple of notices up in the dead hedge explaining its purpose.
Four Friends of Adel Woods standing next to the dead hedging on Adel Bog
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. Recently, we have had a bat walk, and a fungal foray.
Our next “work party” is on Sunday the 10th December, when we will be litter picking, and carrying out path maintenance.
If you would like to take part in our activities, please get in touch by leaving a comment on this website – you should find a button below.
Today, David Preston and two fellow rangers from the Parks and Countryside Department spent the day working in Adel Woods, carrying out work which is beyond the scope of Friends of Adel Woods because it requires the use of a chainsaw.
They began by completing thinning out silver birches around Adel Crag, and creating habitat piles with the cut wood and scrub to promote biodiversity.
After this they cleared from paths three trees which had fallen in the recent storms (Storm Babet and Storm Ciarán).
The first was a tree which had fallen across the path leading down from the picnic area to the Meanwood Valley Trail – just at the junction with the MVT. Our treasurer, Steph, had already removed all the smaller branches with a pair of loppers, but the main branches needed to be tackled with a chainsaw.
Before: a fallen tree near the Meanwood Valley Trail (just visible, upper right quadrant)And after…
The two other large trees had fallen across a path near Adel Crag. David and his colleagues successfully removed these – a difficult job.
Before:two fallen trees across a footpath near Adel CragAnd after…
Finally, they went down to the Buck Stone, thinnng out 2 small trees, and opening up the area.
The plan is to carry out further work on Adel Bog later this year – removing four trees which are encroaching onto Adel Bog.
Thank you, David, to you and your colleagues for all the good work you do!
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. Recently, we have had a bat walk, and a fungal foray.
Our next “work party” is on Sunday the 10th December, when we will be litter picking, and carrying out path maintenance.
If you would like to take part in our activities, please get in touch by leaving a comment on our website.
A pleasant morning and a good turn out of twelve volunteers.
Five of our volunteers chose to litterpick – including two from Litter Free Leeds! Between them they picked up about four bags of rubbish.
The rest of us helped David Preston, our local ranger, to dredge Adel Pond (also known as Mill Fall pond). This pond is man-made and was dug to supply water to a flax mill that once operated here. The pond fell into disuse and silted up until about thirty years ago when Steve Joul led a team of volunteers in digging it out again. It is now a wonderful habitat for frogs and newts and all sorts of aquatic insects.
Dredging the pond has been an annual task for Friends of Adel Woods every Autumn since (and including) 2009. The first thing we have to do every year is clear out the many large logs and rocks which somehow find their way into the pond. Many are concealed under the water and a bit of a tripping hazard. Fortunately, there was only one minor mishap today!
Once the logs and rocks have been removed, it is a question of digging up silt and putting it into buckets to transport away. Today we had four diggers in the pond, and one principal barrowman.
The pond is fed on the north side by a single ditch bringing in a stream of water throughout the year. Unfortunately, the stream also brings in lots of mud and clay as can be seen in the photos.
It is important, therefore, to clear as much mud and leaves from the ditch as possible and three volunteers focused on this task.
Each year we find in the mud where the stream enters the pond many broken fragments of china. Presumably these are the remains of cups, saucers, jugs and plates thrown into the pond by day trippers when Verity’s Cafe, which used to stand nearby, was in it’s heyday. Or perhaps they were thrown in when Verity’s closed down. This year, one item seemed to be a complete vase but unfortunately it shattered into many fragments as yours truly lifted it out of the mud.
At noon, we ceased work to wash down the equipment before heading home for a shower and a nice Sunday lunch.
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 or be added to our mailing list, please get in touch by leaving a comment on our website. Our next event is on Saturday the 4th November when we will be litterpicking and working on Adel Bog with David Preston.
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 and Alwoodley 2030 volunteers working on the community orchard
This evening, Friends of Adel Woods had our first ever evening “work party” led by our secretary, Stephanie.
It was a joint event with Alwoodley 2030 who are a group set up about a year ago under the umbrella of Climate Action Leeds. The aim of Alwoodley 2030 is to “activate community-driven solutions to address the loss of biodiversity and nature and the climate emergency”. You can find out more at their very active Facebook page: Alwoodley 2030: Climate Action Hub.
Our task this evening was to clear bracken and brambles that have grown up around the community orchard in Adel Woods. We had a great turn out of FOAW and Alwoodley 2030 volunteers – fifteen in all – and in an hour and a half of hard work, they made a huge difference.
The orchard was planted in March 2021 by Leeds Parks and Countryside Ranger, Steve Joul, assisted by his son, as part of Leeds City Council’s woodland creation scheme. There are ten trees comprising a range of varieties of apple and pear trees.
The trees were planted as very young saplings. If they seem far apart in the photos, it is because, before planting them, Steve researched the space each would need to grow into a fully mature tree.
Spot the four trees in the photo!
If you would like to find out more about the planting of the trees and their varieties, have a look at our blog entry for the 18th March 2021 – the link is given below.
Can you spot four more four fruit trees in the photo?Some of the team of volunteers enjoying a sense of achievement for a good evening’s work!
Since the trees were cleared, Steve has put some labels on them. For more information about the orchard, here is a link to our blog post for the 18th March 2021
I hope you have enjoyed reading this blog post.
Friends of Adel Woods were set up in 2009 to protect, enhance and maintain Adel Woods and to work with other groups and organisations to that end. We welcome everyone would like to help us look after the beautiful woods on our doorstep.
The next Friends of Adel Woods “work party” is on Saturday the 16th September 2023, when we will be litterpicking and clearing scrub from around the Buck Stone. Have a look at our home page for more information.
Friends of Adel Woods 