Allscott Settling Pools - the migrants are coming!

Another great day at Allscott
Friday March 13 saw the Wrekin Forest Volunteers return to the now defunct Sugar Beet site at Allscott to join the very enthusiastic Julian Langford who is shortly to be ringing in his 49th year of ringing birds here.

Allscott hosts a very special SSI and one that we all hope will develop into a Nature Reserve in its own right. The towers have now all been demolished and the area immediately surrounding it is in the final stages of a clean-up with its future as yet to be determined.


The reed-beds saw a full day of activity as we chopped more willow and had a big burn-up with Julian's insistence on two fires.

This site would normally be a very quiet place to be but the huge arable field at the side was being ploughed and set with seed potatoes by a contract firm who operate with great precision and impressive organisation with no less than eleven very large and hugely expensive tractors each coupled to an equally large and expensive piece of equipment. As Penny pointed out the choreography was amazing! Everyone seemed to know exactly what they had to do next and all were in radio contact. Amazing!
We estimated over £1.2 million in farming tools! So, coupled with the frequent runs with RAF helicopters immediately overhead, it was at times very noisy.

At least the tractors will have long since vacated before the first of the African bird migrants arrive which is what our day here is all about; preparing for their arrival. We plan to return in July to watch and maybe help in the bird-ringing operation which is something that we're all looking forward to. (By the way I'm quite sure that this is not the same as chicken-ringing, the end result of which is a bird for the table of course!).

We found many of the brightly coloured elf-cups around the site.

Nigel had obviously fallen over and landed face-first in one!

Well... it was Comic Relief day.

After we'd cleared and burned all the designated willow some of us were treated to the customary walk around the site by Julian. As we trailed around the edge of the ringing area he pointed out the row of large and established willows that formed the whole of one side of this area - Julian had planted himself back in the '80's to form a solid barrier between the reed-beds and the farmer's field.


As we walked over to the long and somewhat rickety footbridge crossing the River Tern and beyond I pointed out that the site was the better for the demise of the sugar-beet towers and was surprised to hear that Julian didn't share my view on this. In fact I think he rues the day when the end was announced - I suppose it's been a part of the landscape for so many decades now that many will miss this almost ancient landmark.

On the way back in the Trust bus it suddenly occurred to me that there may be another reason and perhaps a little consternation on Julian's part although he didn't mention it; the fact that many of the migrants who are soon to leave the African continent for the long and dangerous trip to this wonderful spot may have been using the towers as a guide. Will they still find the spot? Will they be confused if they don't see them? Does anyone have any thoughts on this? Graham? Pete? I suppose time will only tell.

Anyway, yet another great WuFuv day soon closed and as I watched Brian nodding off on the journey back I smiled as I recalled a tale related to me by my long-standing friend Vera Wayfromer who came across a man looking at a gorse hedge using a magnifying glass. Curious, she asked him what he was doing. 'Looking for Green Hairstreak eggs' he told her. 'Oh!' said Vera 'I didn't know they'd starting nesting yet!' Bless! You couldn't make it up could you? Or could you?

Horse-Logging
Centuries ago horses were used for hauling timber from woods and forests. Timber that would have been used for the industrial furnaces and for charcoal making.

A demonstration of this practice will take place at Ercall Woods on Saturday March 28 11am - 4pm organised by the Shropshire Wildlife Trust and is open to the public with free refreshments. Park at Forest Glen and follow the signs.

Hope to see you there! I'll certainly be trying my hand at having huge shire horses drag me through the trees and scrub!

Yahoo Group
Having discussed this with Pete I thought it might be useful to set up our own Wrekin Forest Volunteers Yahoo Group which will be linked to the blog. So it's up and running now.

This means that any group member will be able to upload photos to the Yahoo Group site for use in the blog or just for others to view, add useful links to nature websites etc and post files that may be of interest to us all.

For example I've uploaded the WFV 2009 Summer Programme which Pete or myself can upload at any time so the current one is always 'live'.

If anyone has a walk it could be uploaded - I've done this with the Little Wenlock Bench Walk which Les kindly sent me. Pam and I walked this last Sunday in the sunshine and it's an excellent 2.7 miler with wooden seats at strategic spots. The accompanying leaflet explains a little of the history and flora and fauna. Highly recommended so if you want to grab a copy just go to the WFV Yahoo Group and print it off.

There are endless possibilities for sharing here; you may have a report about local wildlife for instance or maybe a survey or perhaps a short story you've written, poem etc. Anything as long as it has some link to wildlife in general or our work with the WuFuV's of course.

The WFV Yahoo Group is open to all volunteers and followers of the blog. A few email invites have gone out to those addresses I have. If you didn't get an invite and would like to join the group please look for the purple button in the right sidebar. See you in there! (If viewing this as an email or RSS feed please click the heading at the top of the post to visit the main blog where you'll see the button on the right)

Garden Moth Scheme
Last Friday was the second week of recording and my Skinner trap was slightly up from last week with Hebrew Character x 4, Common Quaker x 1 and Twin-spotted Quaker x 1.

Twin-spotted Quaker

Olly and I briefly talked about a moth-trap night at Apley Castle. We don't have a date yet - most probably a night in June. I'm sure Olly and Sean will welcome all - more info soon.

Catch you all later...

Click the collage below for more pics