Nature

from Issue 87 Autumn 2016

feature

Melwood - Your Local Nature Reserve Autumn Glories

The autumn is a particularly attractive season in Melwood. There is a wide variety of trees in the wood (26 listed on the wood database (www.melwood.btck.co.uk/Databases) and each have their characteristic colour sequence. The falling leaves provide a rich mulch for the 40 varieties of flowering plants present in the wood and the meadow. Most of these will have finished flowering by now and we hope that they will have seeded well and the birds and animals will have distributed them around the site. In the spring we cleared some areas around the path at the back of the wood to encourage seedlings to develop in this area. It had been spread with mulch in the previous autumn and tree and bush cover cut back to provide better light to the developing plants.

Linked to this some large logs were positioned to mark the edge of the path to encourage visitors not to wander in the central area and trample vulnerable plants.

A similar job, which needs to be done regularly in the wood, is to control the ivy on the ground and cut and remove dead vegetation. We do this with a brush cutter and then spread the material cut from the greener parts of the wood as a mulch. This also helps to spread seeds around the site. These tasks enable small plants such as violets and primroses to be exposed to sufficient light to flourish in early spring and provide a colourful display as the wood wakes up.

Plant life in the wood seems to be thriving with many plants of Dusky Cranesbill having flowered along the edges of the paths and a patch of Forget-me-nots, not spotted before, is developing. A commemorative lime, planted in memory of someone who loved the wood produced a good first year’s growth and now looks well established.

Nine bushes have been planted around the eastern side of the wood this year. These comprised 5 Blackthorn, 2 Hawthorn, 1 Spindle and 1 Guelder rose. Some grubs found in the pots were removed and dropped into the river as possible trout food! The increase in trout in this stretch of the Mel is very encouraging and one volunteer has counted 15 good size fish on a walk from Melbourn to Topcliffe Mill. This is largely due to the efforts over several years of our neighbouring conservation group: The River Mel Conservation Group.

Autumn is the time to spot the fungi appearing in the wood. 15 species have been identified including the common morel which is one of the more sought after edible varieties. However there are also non edible types in the wood (the one in the picture is part of the genus including several poisonous varieties) so it is important to have an experienced mushroom identifier present if you are thinking of collecting a few as we don’t want to be responsible for some unpleasant reactions!

The bird populations will be changing with the seasons. An interesting bird walk in May identified 24 species. This was the fifth bird walk since 2008 and the numbers have been consistently in the mid twenties. Species identified this year which haven’t been spotted before were: feral pigeon, spotted woodpecker, house sparrow, kestrel and skylark. Some were only identified by their call and we were grateful to Mike Foley from the British Ornithological Trust and Fowlmere nature reserve who provided a lot of detail on the birds and how their populations were surviving. Nest boxes, several of which were occupied this year, will be cleaned during the winter ready for their new occupants in the spring. We have had to do this earlier each year due to the warmer springs and earlier nesting.

We often disturb some of the rich variety of moths from the undergrowth during our work and a number of voles and shrews have also been seen running away from the area of disturbance. This encourages us to believe that we are maintaining the healthy biodiversity of this small woodland area.

Much of the content of this article is taken from articles and reports by our work team leader Jim Reid.

We have recruited some new enthusiastic volunteers this year, but we always welcome more. If anyone is interested in helping to preserve this habitat please contact Graham Borgonon on 01763 260 358 or Jim Reid on 260 231.