Nailsea Environment and Wildlife Trust

January 2022

 

Work was undertaken across several workdays on a new boardwalk across the wettest area of the meadow, to enable access to the second pond all year round. We hope to finish this in February.

March 2022

 

The 2021 Annual Report can be found here.

 

The boardwalk to the second pond has now been completed. This provides an invaluable path over the deep mud, meaning the field can now be crossed in all weathers.

May 2022

 

A beautiful sunny day for our May workday. We are pleased to have three new young recruits who have joined our group and are a very welcome addition to the volunteer crew.

 

Three silver birches have been planted, thanks to a donation from Nailsea Town Council, to replace the large Ash which was felled as a result of Ash Dieback disease. Two were planted by the gabion bench, near the boardwalk and Ash stump, and one by the curved bench in the meadow to provide shade for visitors as they grow. The Silver Birch in the meadow is to be designated as our contribution to the celebrations for Her Majesty The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee in June this year and a commemorative plaque has been installed.

 

Avon Wildlife Trust ran three wellbeing walks through the spring at Moorend Spout, introducing the reserve to new visitors. We hope that they will carry out more walks through the summer.

 

Over the last few workdays, volunteers have been installing more plastic grids to extend the original boardwalk and
mark out the footpath. This should help prevent the widening of the path and damaging the surrounding ground. They are of great benefit to the less able members of the public who would like to access the reserve all year round. Thanks go to Nailsea Lions for their donation which has enabled purchase of these grids.

 

A second insect hotel has been started, but still needs a lot more material to fill it. We need hollow tubes and sticks, terracotta tiles and bricks with holes and old carpet pieces– if you see any please save them for us.

 

Now spring has arrived, the job of clearing pond weed from the top pond has commenced. We plan to drain the top pond now as it is choked with weed and showing little evidence of life. It needs to be dredged out and re-filled.

August 2022

 

During the monthly workday, a large patch of grass was scythed right back to the ground in preparation for another wildflower seed bed to be started this autumn. Our previous one has been so successful (after presumed failure to germinate last year) that we think it is the way forward to create more meadow flowers as opposed to plug planting, which has not been very successful at all.

 

The upper pond is once again full of life and the weed clearing operation came up with one dragonfly larva
and a baby Smooth Newt. The hard work in draining the pond and clearing huge amounts of sludge seems to have paid off.

 

July 2022

 

The last of the Wellbeing Walks arranged by Avon Wildlife Trust (AWT) took place towards the end of the month, with five people attending and enjoying a guided tour of the meadow.

 

AWT also sent a group of 11 volunteers to help us out for a whole day – opening up the badly overgrown area between the carr and the meadow gate, which hadn’t been touched for about three years! It was a long, slow job of scything, as the underlying grass had turned to heavy thatch. Another group tackled the rampant sedges which are making their
way across the top end of the meadow and managed to clear around 90% of it. In the process they came across a beautifully constructed Harvest Mouse (Micromys minutus) nest.

 

We have many predators of Harvest Mice on the reserve, but this is the second time we have found a nest during scything work, so we can hope that some are surviving and going on to reproduce young in successive years.

October 2022

 

A bat detector was installed in a tree in the meadow close to the carr, as part of a long-term study commissioned by North Somerset Council with equipment provided by the University of the West of England (UWE). What was recorded was astonishing – 11 species of Bats over six nights! There are only 17 species in the whole of the UK, so this was a truly amazing result:

 

  • Brandt’s Bat
  • Brown Long-eared Bat
  • Common Pipistrelle
  • Daubenton’s Bat
  • Leisler’s Bat
  • Lesser horseshoe Bat
  • Nathusius’ pipistrelle
  • Noctule
  • Serotine
  • Soprano Pipistrelle
  • Whiskered Bat

 

The detector also recorded a large number of insects and small mammals:

 

  • speckled bush-cricket
  • dark bush-cricket
  • great green bush-cricket
  • long-winged bush-cricket
  • short-winged bush cricket
  • common shrew
  • eurasian harvest mouse
  • eurasian pygmy shrew
  • yellow-necked mouse