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Despite a dire weather forecast of heavy rain and strong winds for this morning, six of us turned out for this morning’s event. As it turned out, the rain stopped at about 10 am and the sun almost came out, and we had a very pleasant morning.

The plan was to work on Nanny Beck, but the very heavy rain overnight meant that this was not practical.

We decided to do a litter pick, and two of us set off to pick up litter around the cricket ground and Crag Lane – and picked up seven bags of litter!

The rest of us headed down to the Meanwood Valley trail. A few months ago we had spotted half a dozen charity bags, each filled with several hundred charity bags, dumped in the middle of some holly near Adel Bog, and an abandoned tent nearby in the middle of the woods and we thought that today would be a good opportunity to remove them.

After an intensive search for the charity bags we were unable to find them, so it seems likely that someone else has removed them from the woods. However we were able to find the abandoned tent which was in shreds.

It took us half an hour to gather up all the abandoned cans, bottles and general detritus and in the end we had thirteen bags of rubbish and two chairs.

So, as it turned out, it was a very successful morning: twenty bags of rubbish in two hours!

A beautiful morning. We met in the Stairfoot Lane carpark with a group of about five or six people from Litter Free Adel.

While the litter pickers set off along Stairfoot Lane, six of us set off to work on the Hospice Woodland.

In the Hospice Woodland we have been clearing brambles from the young trees, and we have also been thinning out the trees under the guidance of Steve Joul, ranger with Leeds City Council.

The work we have been doing over previous years has clearly been helpful because the areas we have worked on were still very clear. Today we concentrated on areas to the north of the woodland (near Stairfoot Lane) and to the south. Our aim is simply to clear the brambles from the trees while leaving areas of brambles to provide cover for nesting birds and small mammals.

Finishing work at 12 we returned to the car park and three of us set off up Stairfoot Lane to remove a fallen birch tree which was threatening to slide onto the carriageway.

Having removed it we we returned to the car park with an old tyre and a plastic drum which had been dumped in the field.

We placed these with the large amount of litter collected by our gallant team of litterpickers.

Today I had the pleasure and privilege of speaking to the Mothers’ Union at St John’s Moor Allerton about Adel Woods and the work done by Friends of Adel Woods.

We had a good audience who were interested in and very supportive of our work.

I talked about the history of Alwoodley (for which I am indebted to Steven Burt and Graham Branston), about the work we do in the woods (for which I am very grateful to all our Friends), and about the natural history. Admittedly, I am not very hot on the natural history, but I am very grateful to Steve Joul, countryside ranger with Leeds City Council, and expert on all things natural historical, for all the knowledge he has shared over the years, whether on tasks or talks, which enabled me to look like I knew what I was talking about!

Thank you to Beryl for inviting me to do the talk, and to Jocelyn who sorted out the IT – and to the ladies who made me so welcome.

And thank you to Diana for coming to the talk and taking the photos!

A beautiful morning. Three of us met up with Steve Joul in Old Leo’s carpark at 10 am to complete the survey of the nest boxes in Adel Wood – on the stretch of the Meanwood Valley Trail from the Slabbering Baby to the Seven Arches.

We set off down to the Slabbering Baby where our first nest box was number 38 by the bridge over Nanny Back. This seems to be a nest box favoured by nuthatches, and we weren’t disappointed this year. You can always tell in advance when a nest box has been used by nuthatches because they fill all possible gaps in the structure of the nest with mud. When you open the box, the nest is made of chips of bark, whereas the tit nests are made from a variety of materials – moss, manmade fibres, grass and hair. There are some pictures of a nuthatch nest below.

We then surveyed the fourteen nest boxes from the Slabbering Baby to the Seven Arches. On our way we were joined for 45 minutes or so by David – for which we were grateful!

Most of the nest boxes were used in the 2018 breeding season. There were a couple of particularly interesting observations.

Box 40, which is about halfway between the Slabbering Baby and the Seven Arches, had a long story to tell. It contained a lot of nesting materials and an unhatched tit egg, which indicates that it was successfully used for breeding. However, upon examining the contents of the nest material, Steve found a number of dead bumble bees which presumably used the box for nesting too. This hypothesis is supported by the presence of a large number of wax moth cocoons and larvae. The species of bumble bee was bombus hypnorum which migrated to the UK from Europe since the beginning of the 21st century. This species likes to nest in nest boxes.

Box number 48, the next nest box down from number 40, was used by nuthatches. Interestingly, nuthatches started to use this nest box in 2017 – we could tell by the mud plastered around the outside of the box – but were clearly driven off by tits because when we surveyed it (in January last year), the box contained a tit nest.

We finished the nest box survey at about 1.30 pm after a thoroughly enjoyable morning in Adel Woods.

Thank you Steve Joul! and thanks to all who helped in this gargantuan task.

Six of us joined Steve Joul this morning for our annual nest box survey, clean and refurbishment.

The weather was very mild and dry, but we got off to a slow start as a miscommunication meant that your correspondent had to go and fetch a wheelbarrow and some hard hats before we could begin!

We started off by going up into the Alwoodley plantation via the diagonal path which runs from Crag Lane up into Alwoodley Plantation.

Passing the bat boxes (which we do not survey because we are not licensed), we started with number 17 and then worked our way round to number 11. On our way we refurbished number 6, a robin box, by adding a plastic covering to the roof – which keeps the nest boxes nice and dry.

From there we cleaned and surveyed nest boxes along Crag Lane to the picnic area.

Two of our number had to leave about 1 pm. The rest of us completed surveying the nest boxes in the picnic area, and then retired to your correspondent’s house for a sandwich, drink and piece of Christmas cake.

We resumed work at about 3 pm, starting with the final two nest boxes on Crag Lane near Old Leo’s clubhouse – number 14 and letter T on the map. Box T is a woodcrete nest box donated by Tina nine years ago. Inside, there is wooden base for the nesting area which the occupants have partly pecked away over the years. We replaced this with a new piece of wood.

From here we joined the Meanwood Valley Trail and cleaned and surveyed the nest boxes down to Adel Pond. En route we placed box number 15, which we took down to repair last year, in a holly bush on the MVT.

We finished work at about 4.15 pm when it was getting dark.

Most of the nest boxes were used again. Of the two robin boxes surveyed, neither had been used by robins, but one had been used by a family of tits.

Last Summer was particularly warm and dry. This may have affected some of the things we noticed when surveying the nest boxes. There were probably fewer unhatched eggs in the boxes we surveyed today. Thankfully, there were no skeletons of chicks in any of the nest boxes we surveyed today. On some years we have found skeletons in a few of the boxes.

We also noticed that the majority of the lids of the wooden boxes – far more than in previous years – were stuck down where clothes moth larvae had eaten into the wood of the lid and the box. Many of the boxes contained living larvae – small white caterpillar type creatures. The boxes also seemed to contain a lot more spiders than we have found on previous occasions.

A highlight of this afternoon’s survey was that we met someone who takes his Harris Hawk for a walk in the woods and Steve had the thrill of holding the hawk on his hand!

We all agreed that it had been a very satisfying and enjoyable day.

The last FOAW event of the year.  There was heavy rain at 8 am, but by 10 am the rain had diminished to a gentle drizzle.  Nevertheless, the morning started like an Agatha Christie story in reverse: first there was one; then two; then three; then four;  then two more after an exchange of text messages about the weather; and finally another two bringing the number of Friends to eight – not bad for a wet morning, the weekend before Christmas.

Our first task (when there were still only four of us) was to pose by the overflowing litter bin in the Stairfoot Lane car park.  Fortunately, someone from Leeds City Council arrived to empty the bin later in the morning!

Then, while our fellow Friend from the Litter Free Adel Group set off to clear Stairfoot Lane of litter, the other three of us set off down Crag Lane to unblock the culvert near the picnic area.

You can just see the previously invisible culvert at the bottom of the picture.

The culvert was completely invisible under the fallen leaves, and was partially blocked with mud.  Fortunately,  as we were working, Rob – who helped unblock the culvert last December – came along and was able to show us where we had stowed a long tree trunk for this purpose.

Having cleared the culvert, we then made our way to the Stairfoot Lane steps and cleared them of leaves and an accumulation of mud.

It was while we were engaged in this task, that four more Friends arrived to help!

Finally, we ascended the steps and took the path to the right, a few steps down from the top.  Going down that path, we cleared several areas of encroaching holly, but the main prize was to remove a large tree trunk which had fallen across the path.  Your correspondent will admit, that upon seeing the trunk in question, he thought that it was a hopeless task.  However, Geoff set to work with determination and true grit and almost single handedly cut through the trunk with a bow saw.

All in all, a very satisfactory morning’s work.

Merry  Christmas everybody!

and, if you have been, thank you for reading!