Telford Town Park Bat Boxes

Don't the days fly by? It seems like only yesterday when I was posting Granville pics on our Wrekin Forest Volunteers blog and here we are again.

Howler Competition
Last week, you may recall, we had the first blog competition with a little Howler dropped into the post. Olly won this by being the first to point out that there were no Red Squirrels in Telford Town Park. Oddly, Les thought it was a red robin! Best keep to identifying fungi and caterpillars Les!

What was really impressive about Olly's winning entry was that it was entered into the comments at 08:48 Monday morning which was about 4 minutes after I submitted the post! For this remarkable feat Olly was palpably overwhelmed to receive his prize, taken from my 'Little Box of Giveaways' (i.e. things I no longer need!), a biography of Pete Docherty, infamous ex-singer of 'The Libertines' and now singer with his own band 'Babyshambles' who do the occasional gig up and down the country. They'd like to do more but Pete keeps forgetting to turn up!


What was special about Olly's prize as I explained at the 'presentation' was that the book was signed. Unfortunately, not by Pete as he didn't turn up for the signing either! Which left me with no alternative other than to add my own autograph on the first page. Admittedly not so impressive but sometimes things just don't turn out as expected.

Anyway, well done Olly and it was obviously a good choice because Olly turns out to be a fan of Pete Docherty - so... that's two of us then!


There's another blinding but intentional mistake in this week's post with an equally salubrious and well-chosen prize. Don't forget this will not be a grammatical or typo error both of which may be abundant, but more an obvious geographical, historical or factual mistake. When you find it just post a comment on the bottom of the post just below the Telford Town Park collage. First to spot it and leave the comment wins - erm, well... it depends who wins!

Bat Boxes at Telford Town Park
Anyway , for this week's Wrekin Forest Volunteers task we were joined by Friends of Telford Town Park led by Chris an ardent supporter of TTP activities and active campaigner in maintaining this wonderfully diverse natural habitat.

We were all here today to build and erect nest & bat boxes.

We kicked off with a stroll around Withy Pool and a very interesting bat talk by Pete - WuFuV's leader - who never ceases to amaze at the depth of knowledge on all things countryside that he keeps under that wise old pate, although I have to say even Pete hadn't heard of The Mucklewick Walk that I did last Monday. But then mentioning it to many others it appears no-one else has! Such a pity! It's a great little 6-mile circular taking in the south ridge of Stiperstones and Mucklewick Hill itself offering great views from both but with little effort. One that I'll definitely do again. If anyone's interested in joining me - drop a comment below or catch me on the next WuFuV gig and we'll sort something out. And for anyone who doubts it exists:-


Back to the bat boxes and Telford Town Park
As Pete explained there are certain areas of the park that are frequented by quite large colonies of mainly Pipistrelle bats but other species such as the Dormouse bat are also to be found.

On our stroll around the pool we identified places to place our yet-to-be-built boxes.

Withy Pool is, of course, just a small part of this wonderful and largely natural wildlife area that is Telford Town Park consisting of around 152 hectares and I wouldn't mind betting that most who visit only see a tiny part of it - i.e. around the playground and Spout Farm House. There is, however, as we all know, much more to TTP than that! It reaches right down to the River Severn in the south, to Malinslee in the north, Stirchley east and Dawley west, much of which is a designated Local Nature Reserve.

It was in 1968 that Telford as a town rose like the proverbial phoenix from the ashes of primarily, the coal industry which was vibrant until the closure of the last mine - Grange pit, in 1894. New industries emerged for the manufacture of lime salts, charcoal, naphtha and latterly paving slabs and kerbstones until all of that eventually died too.


With the build of Telford Town the park area was thankfully encouraged to return to it's former state and reclaimed by nature. It is now once more abundant with wildlife and the home to butterflies such as Dingy Skipper and Green Hairstreak.

The grasslands in summer sport Spotted Orchids to name but one very welcome wildflower and the park also boasts the only area outside of the Stiperstones where cowberry can be found.


Bats, fish, birds, squirrels, dragon & damsel flies, reptiles, rabbits and foxes also abound in this rich and diverse space.

Fungi are also prevalent and on our Withy Pool circumnavigation we came across a line of little white-capped dwarfs which appeared to be heading off down the bank.

Thanks to Les for identifying them as Trooping Funnel Caps (Clitocybe geotropa). Pete: would you call these 'gregariously decurrent'?!

Anyway, on returning to the hut we set about building the bat boxes (I decided to leave my somewhat dubious carpentry skills to others as I seem to be quiet adept at building them upside down!).

The erection team then headed for the trees with ladder, strop and helmets













Caption Competition inspired by Nigel
Thanks again to Les and Nigel for their pic contributions. The one below is from Nigel and we thought it'd be great to turn it into a Caption Competition so please feel free to add to the comments below with 'who said what'. There seem to be many opportunities here with the ladder appearing to fall, a lifebelt, Olly running with a rope, and me... well - I'm not sure!







No prizes for this one just a bit of fun. Make your suggestions in the comments below this post. Let's all have a go - open to everyone!

Please keep them clean - comments are not moderated - as soon you hit 'send' its on the blog!





Don't forget The Howler! Did you spot it? Leave your answer in the comments below to win this weeks' fabulous prize.

And don't miss next weeks' post when we Dingle with the Devil! If you haven't already done so please enter your email address above right to receive the email alerts every time a new post is done. Applies to anyone reading who would like to be updated with Wrekin Forest Volunteers escapades!

Click the collage to run the slides...

Catch you all next week!