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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.

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.