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Leeds City Council staff recently bulldozed away the mountain bike track to the north of Stairfoot Lane.  Subsequently, Your correspondent was invited to a attend a site meeting to discuss the track.  Before attending the meeting, your correspondent canvassed the opinion of the FOAW mailing list, and it would be fair to say that the overwhelming view of those on the list was in favour of the existence of the bike track or at least had a live and let live attitude.

The meeting took place today, 1 March 2013.  Your correspondent attended and met a member of the council staff, the three City councillors for Alwoodley, a City councillor for Adel and local landowners.

It was explained that the bike track had been removed by the council for health and safety reasons.  The validity of those reasons were discussed and your correspondent passed on the views of FOAW – giving Councillor Harrand a copy of the emails your correspondent had received.

It would be fair to say that the general view of the meeting was in favour of the existence of the bike track – as somewhere for people to get out and engage in healthy physical activity.  It will be interesting to see how things develop.

There are two footnotes.

Firstly, your correspondent found at the remains of the bike track a note from a dog walker to the bikers suggesting that Friends of Adel Woods were responsible for the removal of the bike track.  This is simply untrue and the result of an overactive imagination.

Secondly, if you have been to the track and seen some new wooden stakes in the land, these are apparently there to mark out the boundary of the land owned by Leeds City Council.

As befits the 61st anniversary of Elizabeth II being proclaimed Queen of the United Kingdom, today was a beautiful day.

Six of us met at 10(ish) to complete our survey of the FOAW nest boxes from the Slabbering Baby down to the Seven Arches.  Excitingly, Phil reported at the outset seeing a nuthatch going into the nest box just by the Slabbering Baby (one we surveyed in part 2).

We got off to a slow start – due in part to Yorkshire Water having changed the padlock on the gate down to the Slabbering Baby, so we had to take everything down by wheelbarrow.  Accordingly, by 10.45 we had managed no more than to lean a ladder against a tree! It did not look likely that we would, as hoped, survey twelve boxes by 1 pm!

We refurbished about four boxes on site with new backing and roofs, and replaced seven with four new woodstone boxes and three refurbished boxes.  We completed our survey by 2 pm.

Our starling/treecreeper box had been badly damaged, probably, by woodpeckers, but had a tit nest at the bottom.  Amazing to think that newly fledged blue tits or great tits had to climb a foot to get out!

All the nest boxes surveyed today were used for nesting.

It is going to be interesting to see how the birds take to our new woodstone boxes – demonstrated below by Tom.

Steve, Brian and your correspondent completed the day by replacing box number 5, which had been badly damaged by squirrels, with a refurbished box.

Below, Andrew inspects box number 5.

Four of us got together for a couple of hours to refurbish the dilapidated nest boxes we took down last weekend.  We even had one visitor from a well-known prison camp run by the USA.

Many of the nest boxes we have surveyed this winter have been damp or even wet inside – perhaps not surprising when 2012 was the wettest year on record.  We therefore put a backing and roof of damp proof course on the nest boxes.   The newly refurbished nest boxes will be used to replace any damaged ones when we complete our survey this Friday.

What a difference a day makes:  yesterday

Our garden yesterday

morning we woke to find another three inches of snow – on top of the previous snow fall of three inches.  This morning, we woke to find that it had nearly all gone!

In fact today was a beautiful day – with some lovely sunshine and very mild compared to recent days.

In the afternoon, six of us (Steve Joul, your correspondent, Jen, Brian, Andrew and Chris) continued our nest box survey.

We needed six of us because of the amount of equipment and luggage we had with us – including eight new Woodstone Nest Boxes, purchased with the aid of a council grant.

Between 2.15 and 5.00 pm we managed to survey 7 boxes – not a bad achievement bearing in mind that we were working in probably the roughest and  muddiest part of the Meanwood Valley trail: some of the mud was about a foot deep!

A tit nest – with luminous green material!

All but one of the nest boxes we surveyed had been used for nesting – and the one that had not been used had been used for roosting.  Four of the boxes had been used by tits, and two by nuthatches.  This means that of the boxes we have surveyed so far, three were used by nuthatches last year – and they were until recently considered a rarity in the north of England.

Some of the boxes were a little worse for wear after two years use and we replaced four with Woodstone boxes which are much stronger and easier to clean.  We refurbished one or two with a new plastic roof and the ones we replaced we have returned to the depot for refurbishment and re-use in the fullness of time.

Only another twelve boxes to go!

Thanks to Val Compton for these pictures of the woods in the recent snow.

The bridge from Spring Hill

The Stairfoot Lane steps

The pond steps

Adel Pond

The bridge across Nanny Beck

Another year drawing to an end and time to survey and clean FOAW’s nest boxes once more.

It is important to clean old nesting materials from the nest boxes so that lice, fleas and diseases do not infect next year’s broods.

We had six volunteers in the morning, and split into two teams – the robins, led by your correspondent, and the blue tits led by Steve Joul.

Robins like to nest  in secret places and their nest boxes – which have a large open front – were concealed in the middle of holly bushes.  For the first half hour of searching, Team Robins were unable to find the first two boxes we sought.  However, we eventually found five of the six robin boxes placed by FOAW.

Four had not been used for nesting for the second year running – and it may be time to try moving them to different locations.  One contained a nest – and interestingly this was the one which was used for nesting last year – which again suggests that the others may not be in suitable positions.

Aerial view of the nest in the robin nest box

Comparing our nest with nests on the internet,it is unclear whether our nest was a robin’s nest or a blue or great tit’s nest.

Robin’s nest box used for the storage of acorns and the like.

One of our robin nest boxes – placed at low level – had been used by a squirrel or other creature for the storage of food.

Team blue tit surveyed and cleaned the nest boxes  provided for blue tits, great tits, nuthatches and similar sized birds.  Since all of these nest boxes were fixed at least three metres above ground, this required climbing a ladder and nerves of steel!

Virtually all of the tit boxes surveyed had been used for nesting – including one half eaten by squirrels – which, as Steve Joul commented, shows that the raising of young in Adel Woods is limited by the availability of nesting sites rather than by food or other factors.

One thing we did discover this year, though, was that there were more unhatched eggs in the nest boxes than we have found in previous years.  This may be due to the extremely wet summer we have had, or perhaps the very warm spell in early Spring followed by cooler, wet weather.

Steve Joul examines a the nesting material from the nuthatch nest.

At lunchtime, Team Robin and Team Blue Tit dispersed to carry out Christmas shopping and other familial duties.  However, the team leaders stayed on in the afternoon as “Team Robin Blue Tit” to survey further tit boxes.  In the course of our survey, we were visited and egged on by Beth, Graham and Judith – for which we are grateful.

In the afternoon we found one of the tit boxes contained a nuthatch nest – which is entirely different in character from a blue tit or great tit nest, being made of little chips of birch bark.  We know that tit box 38 down by the Slabbering Baby was used by a pair of nuthatches this year, and so that is two pairs of nesting nuthatches at least this year.

Santa’s Elves hard at work!

Thank you to Old Leo’s rugby club who let us meet in their Clubhouse to make our garlands.

Unfortunately, the Clubhouse had been booked for a charity event in the afternoon to raise funds for dogs and so we were forced out at midday and adjourned to your correspondent’s house to complete as many garlands as we could.

Nevertheless we had a very enjoyable morning – fortified with further shots of Barbara’s non-alcoholic fruit punch and Cooplands’ excellent mince pies (four for a pound!).

For the last two years, Steve Joul has shown us how to make Christmas Garlands and Yule Logs.  This year we decided to go solo and sell some garlands to raise funds.  You know the old adage:  Give a man a fish and he has a meal.  Teach a man to fish …and you get some peace and quiet at the weekends!

Mind what you do with that sellotape!

We decided not to make Yule Logs because it requires a bit more preparation.  However, today was the first step in making garlands – to make the bases so that next weekend we can get off to a flying start and make hundreds of garlands for sale.

We had an excellent turnout and made about 22 bases and a couple of specimen garlands so that the novices knew what the finished product will look like.

David astounds his co-workers when his halo momentarily slips!

Barbara treated us with non-alcoholic punch and we enjoyed some excellent mince pies from Cooplands (four for a pound!).

Yet another happy morning of activities, and friendship!

A morning litterpicking and improving the paths.

Only another 9.9 tonnes to go!

Thank you to Leeds City Council who delivered a load of crushed sandstone for us to play with.

Man Conquers Stream!

Dave  did a great job recreating the Corinth Canal near the picnic area and improving stretch of footpath which regularly turns into a quagmire.

Happy Friends!