Friends of Adel Woods in Stairfoot Lane Carpark: glad to be back!
Our first Friends of Adel Woods event since 13th December, and the first after so-called Freedom Day (July 19th), when most of the covid 19 restrictions were removed.
Would anyone turn up? There was no need to worry: eleven of us came, full of enthusiasm, to help Steve Joul with a range of tasks in the woods. Even better, the forecast thunderstorms did not arrive, and it was a beautiful day.
Four of us set off to pick up litter – and picked up lots of broken glass around Adel Crag before dispersing to pick up litter around the picnic area and in the beech wood.
Repairing the steps from Stairfoot Lane carpark down to Adel Beck
The rest of us set off to the steps down from the carpark to Adel Beck to repair a couple of the steps and to clear mud from the rest of them. We last did this eighteen months ago in January 2020 (Oh, those innocent days before covid!) and in parts they were turning into a muddy bank – caused in part by the activity of some very energetic moles!
As we worked on the steps, the two Davids went to remove a tree which had fallen across the path along the side of the stream. Having sawn the trunk into three, they then got a passerby to move the trunk for them!
The path by the Adel Beck, Adel Woods
Having cleared the tree, the two Davids set about creating some drainage channels to stop the path turning into a quagmire whenever it rains.
Meanwhile, back at the steps, some of us were still removing mud and repairing the second step, while Steve and Roderic had moved to Crag Lane to clear a drainage pipe near the picnic area.
We held our Annual General Meeting this evening by Zoom. All the current committee members stood for re-election and were duly appointed.
Roger Gilbert was appointed chair, Judith White treasurer and Stephanie Clarke was appointed secretary. Rob Hall agreed to check the annual accounts.
The constitution provides for a committee of 10 members. Currently, we have six committee members, so we are keen for new volunteers to join the committee. If you are interested in joining the committee and having an input into the work done by Friends of Adel Woods please put yourself forward – you can do this by contacting Roger Gilbert by posting a comment on this website. The duties of the committee are not onerous. In a normal year we have about four meetings when we decide on our program of work, discuss and approve fund raising and expenditure, and deal with the matters which arise from time to time.
The Chair’s review of activities from May 2019 to May 2020
Our last AGM was on the 9th May 2019. We couldn’t have an AGM in person in May 2020 due to Covid 19 restrictions and it has been put off until today. So we have two years to review.
May 2019 to May 2020
From May 2019 to May 2020 we carried out the following:
eight litterpicking mornings
three mornings working on Adel Moor
two mornings working on Adel Bog
four mornings of path clearing including repairing the Stairfoot Lane steps
one morning clearing mud and debris from Adel Pond
one morning working in the hospice woodland
two days of nest box cleaning and surveying with S Joul
one day when David S and I replaced a missing nest box by the bridge below the pond – this particular location being a popular one for nuthatches to nest in.
In addition Steve Joul let a very successful Fungal Foray in October.
We also had a stall on the village green in August when Kibitz played.
In addition it is worth saying that 2019 was our tenth anniversary year and we celebrated this with a meal at the Olive Branch attended by 58 people, and the sale of a FOAW 2020 calendar which sold 50 copies.
The Friends of Adel Woods 2020 Calendar
Our last event in this year was the path clearing in March 2020. However, we had a great discovery when Lisa and Andy Worrilow found a colony of green hairstreak butterflies on Adel Moor – hitherto the only colony in the Leeds area was on Otley Chevin.
May 2020 to May 2021
Our activities were severely curtailed from March 2020 due to the Covid 19 lockdown.
We were not able to have our AGM or our annual birdsong walk in May 2020. We did, however, manage to have some events from May 2020 to today.
In September we spent a day raking mowings from the Orchid Meadow after Steve and a volunteer, Jim, mowed it. We also had a morning in December when we extended the northern boundary of the meadow. I should say that the Orchid Meadow has been a great success after all the work which FOAW and Steve have done on it. See the pictures on the blog for June 2020.
In October we had a morning of dredging Adel Pond, working on the ditches draining into the pond, and Judith cleaned out the Slabbering Baby.
We also had a day in the Autumn path clearing, but I don’t seem to have put a blog entry or have any photos!
Other notable events are the installation of the new interpretation boards – Adel Moor, Alwoodley Crag, and Buckstone Road entrance and the planting of a new orchard in the practice rugby field.
The Interpretation boards: in June, David Preston helped some of us choose sites to place them. In September, we helped Steve Joul clear the sites and mark them. In March David and his colleagues installed them for us – and they look wonderful.
David Preston putting the finishing touches to one of the new interpretation panels in Adel Woods
Steve has planted ten fruit trees – eight apple and two conference pear trees – in what used to be the practice rugby ground to the north west of Old Leo’s clubhouse..
Oh, and I should say that the Green Hairstreaks were seen on Adel Moor in April, but we are concerned that they may not have been able to breed before the rather wet weather we have had in the last month.
Apart from that, I have put some entries in the blog about ring necked parakeets in Leeds and murmurations of starlings, badgers and yellow hammers
One thing is clear is that Adel Woods has been a very popular recreational spot during the lockdowns – as evidenced by the large number of extra paths that have appeared for the first time in the last year.
In these days of corona virus frenzy, your correspondent was not sure if anyone would turn up today, but we had a healthy group of nine of us.
The Meanwood Valley Trail – after (from the opposite direction)
Four of us litter picked and picked up seven or eight bags of rubbish, while the rest of us went down to the Meanwood Valley Trail, just south of the cricket pitches, to clear away two birch trees which had fallen across the footpaths, and to cut back holly.
Clearing a path off the Meanwood Valley Trail
We have had so much rain in recent months that the Meanwood Valley Trail was in many places a 15cm deep quagmire. However, the weather was fine and we had a lovely morning of teamwork, conversation, birdsong and even some sunshine at times!
In January 2010, Friends of Adel Woods, under the expert tutelage of Steve Joul, senior countryside ranger with Leeds City Council, put up nest boxes and seven bat boxes in Adel Woods.
The bat boxes were fixed to two trees about 25 yards to the right of Crag Lane, just before reaching the Rugby Club car park. Four were placed around the trunk of one tree and three around the trunk of another nearby. The bat boxes are placed together around the trunk so that the bats have a choice as to which one they prefer.
Bat boxes differ from tit boxes in that, rather than having an entrance hole in the front, they have a slit in the base through which bats can climb up into the box. In the picture above, Steve Joul is holding a bat box and you can see the slit just above the number 25.
The function of a bat box is also different from the function of a tit box. Whereas tit boxes are used for nesting by a single pair of tits, sparrows or nuthatches, many bats will share a single box for roosting and bringing up their young.
The fallen bat box
Number 23: not ET! Note the slits across the back plate to help the bats to climb up inside.
It is illegal for people without a bat licence to interfere with bat boxes once they have been put up, and so our bat boxes have been untouched by human hand for the last nine years. This weekend, Rob, one of our committee members, found that the back plate of one of the boxes had rotted and the box had fallen to the ground. So this was a great opportunity to find out if the box had been used.
On opening the box, we found no evidence of bat use, but the box was full of cobwebs and bird nesting material (bats don’t make a nest)!
The inside of the bat box
The contents separated out
The bottom part of the nesting material seemed to be small bits of straw, while the upper part seemed to be moss and manmade fibres which we often find in tit nests.
Close up of the “tit” type nesting material
What species of bird or birds could have built a nest in the bat box? The obvious candidate is the tree creeper which usually builds its nest behind the loose bark of a tree. The website of garden-birds.co.uk says that the treecreeper nest is made from twigs, grass and moss lined with feathers – which seems a reasonable description of the materials found in our bat box. However, there seemed to be a clear distinction between the lower and upper part of the nesting material, which raises the intriguing possibility that treecreepers originally nested in the box, but that later a pair of blue tits or great tits used it to build a nest above the treecreeper nest. We’ll never know.
Treecreepers are a common sight in Adel Woods – we had some excellent sightings on our birdsong walk in May – have a look at our blog entry
Friends of Adel Woods have organised a number of well attended and well received bat walks over the years – here is the report of our walk on 4 September 2015
Kibitz: Alwoodley Village Green, Leeds on 18th August 2019
On the afternoon of Sunday 18th August there was a free concert on Alwoodley Village Green when Kibitz performed Klezmer and Eastern European Folk music for an appreciative audience.
Despite fears that the concert might be cancelled due to the weather (it rained heavily earlier in the week), it was a lovely afternoon, though a little blustery.
Friends of Adel Woods decided that this would be a great opportunity to publicise our work and to muster up some more recruits and we put up a grand gazebo at the northern end of the green. Our treasurer Judith was anxious that the gazebo might blow away in a gust of wind, but in fact the real problem was remembering how to put it up and the chair had to go home to find the instructions!
Friends of Adel Woods: Alwoodley Village Green, 18th August 2019
Once up, the gazebo was turned into a treasure house of interesting information about the fauna and flora to be found in Adel Woods and the work carried out by FOAW.
Friends of Adel Woods: Alwoodley Village Green, 18 August 2019
Thoughout the afternoon we had a visitors to our stand and we signed up six people to our mailing list.
At the end of the afternoon, Fetch, the pet shop on King Lane, brought over some gluten free cakes to revitalise our enthusiastic volunteers – and very nice they were too!
Two Friends tuck into supplies brought by the pet shop while our treasurer looks on. Friends of Adel Woods, Alwoodley Village Green, 18 August 2019.
Thanks to Stephanie and Judith for excellent creativity and ingenuity in providing displays for our stand and to Barbara, Tamsin, Michelle, David, Rob, Diana, Chris and Pippa for helping to put up the stand and talk to the public about our work.
Packing away at the end of the day.
Thank you to Kibitz for an excellent afternoon’s entertainment. Thanks to Alwoodley Parish Council for organising the event. And thanks to Fetch for some excellent cakes!
Kibitz perform Klezmer and Eastern European folk music on Alwoodley Village Green, Leeds 18 August 2019
Friends of Adel Woods 