Work began last month on the repair of the old field barn thanks to a grant we have received from the Farming in Protected Landscapes programme via the Shropshire Hills AONB. It is some years since it last stood upright and seeing it rising high again from near ground level is very exciting. The timber frame is made from locally-sourced Douglas Fir, the stone used to rebuild the walls was either already here or foraged from a nearby derelict barn and quarry (with landowner permission). The tin sheets which are going back on to the frame are nearly all from the original barn with extras being bought from a local dealer who seems to get quite regular supplies of sheets from local barns sadly no longer in use.
Of course the stone walls are far from square so there has been some discussion about how to deal with this with the timber frame. Luckily as it is a field barn we don't have to be too pernickety. The barn will have an earth floor and an upper level on the West side. Bird, bat and insect boxes will be added. It will provide a useful eyrie to keep an eye on goings on in the wetland and a shelter from rain and wind for both animals and humans. By the time I write my next blog entry, the barn should be completed and standing in the landscape once more, hopefully for another century and beyond.
The return of Spring
Also coming back after a seemingly long, bleak winter are the flowers, at long last! The Redlake valley seems always to be behind the curve with the onset of Spring, but the (slightly) warmer, longer days of late April have slowly coaxed out the first of the Cuckoo Flowers (Ladies Smock) and the hedge has been white with Blackthorn blossom. Bumblebees hummed constantly for a while high up among the Goat Willow blossom. Lesser Celandine gave the field a yellow tinge for a time, now taken over by armies of Dandelions and the bronze of the Field Wood Rush. Yellow Rattle seedlings made an appearance earlier than last year and look extremely thick in places having self seeded last summer.
In mid March, we planted a short length of hedge along the lane in the wetland enclosure with nice big bare-rooted native whips from our local nursery at Bucknell. We had to put guards on them due to our high rabbit population but they will only stay on for the first few years.
In the corner of the lower field by the Goat Willow we planted a bevy of Alder Buckthorn, not a tree we know very well but a foodplant of the Brimstone butterfly. To keep the sheep away from these while they get established we extended the deadwood hedge using brash from our own coppiced Hazel and from what was thrown out of a newly-laid hedge just down the lane. I really enjoy making deadwood hedges, particularly with Hazel which works so beautifully. The deadwood hedge will make a livestock barrier, but also provide a habitat in its own right and will gradually rot down year by year, so will need to be topped up annually.
Wetland: frogs, snipe, ducks and herons
In the wetland we had a lot of frogspawn this year (more than last) helped along by the fact it was particularly well flooded this year due to a natural 'dam' in the main watercourse made by a huge amount of watercress that had been swept down in one of the big winter storms. It formed a very useful 'plug' in one of the narrower 'necks' in the ditch and created a natural lake behind it. Just in time for the frogs to lay into it!
The frogspawn laid in our garden pond hatched fine but we think the tadpoles have been decimated by predators. We saw four smooth newts in the pond for the first time recently, basking in the warmer shallows and there are also a lot of Great Diving Beetle larvae who seem to be skilled predators of small tadpoles. Luckily for the frogs, there is a totally different dynamic in the wetland (which has flowing freshwater and still, very deep water-holding ditches) and the tadpoles there seem to be still very much in evidence. It all goes to show the more different types of habitat you can create, the better!
In one of the shallower pools, I was entertained for several evenings by the comings and goings of some rush stalk-encumbered caddis fly larvae who scuttled (albeit slowly) around with their burden of vegetative camouflage. There are around 200 species of caddis fly in the UK, many of whom use different materials to build their protective body 'casings,' sticking the pieces together with silk from glands near their mouth. My attempts at photographing them were not successful at all ...
There was great excitement one day earlier this month when our trail camera captured some shots of the Snipe that seems to be foraging/over nighting in the wetland. We have seen up to four of these birds flying up and away on occasion. I had spent some time in February doing some light clearing of the soft rush which is rather thuggish and grows thick and luxuriantly, everywhere. I cleared some south facing 'crescents' of rush (it is already coming back strongly but the vegetation layer is now much less dense here for now). So there is a bit more muddy ground for birds to forage. Their camouflage colouring is perfect amongst the rush.
Herons (occasionally up to three birds at a time) have been busy patrolling all the ponds over winter and we've got several photos of them catching quite sizeable looking frogs. The seem to forage at night too as well as in the broad daylight. The new extended pond is host to regular duck parties at night, we have found out, with a pair each of Mallard and Mandarin tootling around quite happily. There is never any sign of them in the daytime. This pond too had some good quantities of frogspawn but since we are letting it re-vegetate naturally (which seems to be quite slow - much slower than the wetland vegetation which came back magically fast) it is still a little bit bare-looking. It just needs more time. It will be interesting to see how it fares with regular duck visits.
Emergent woodland
Over the winter, every time we walked up to the new wood we spent a bit of time pulling long grass from, and cleaning the inside of, tree guards which are still in place on the saplings. We removed tubes off some of the Hazel and Hawthorn and Dog Rose. They don't seem to be affected by rabbits up there, but we won't remove the guards off the rest for a year or two yet.
The saplings are now all in early leaf, or bud, the Silver Birch leading the way with their shimmering display of fresh leaves.
We are trying to manage the grass clearing at the top of the wood as a little meadow. It gets very soggy in the winter so it's going to be very different to the meadow in the main field, but it could be interesting. We have no grazing there, so grass removal will have to be done by us.
Finally the steep hedge bank below the overstood Hazel we have been coppicing this winter is looking colourful with Red Campion taking the lead after an initial carpet of purple Ground Ivy. They are benefitting from the extra light being let in (as are the nettles!).
