Cothill Fen SSSI - Saturday, 5 October 2024
Blog by Sally, photos by Margaret and Sally
On a glorious sunny morning, 8 Green Gymmers gathered in the Cothill School car park to meet Stephanie Cole from Natural England for our session at Cothill Fen, a site of Special Scientific Interest and home to the variety of rare alkaline-tolerant plants and the invertebrates they attract. Green Gym have been coming to this site for well over a decade and it has been wonderful to see the transformation during this time to restore it. We were last here in August.
Adrian was our leader this week and both he and Steph had been working at Cothill Fen the day before at the regular monthly session with the NE volunteers. Once we had gathered up the tools, we made our way along String Lane to the gate to the new board walk, where we would make our camp at its wider point.
Our tasks for the day were to continue fixing chicken wire along the board walk to help prevent slips, especially when the boards are wet or icy, and to rake up the cut material from the previous day to build up the bund in the middle of the 'lake' to prevent the fen from being flooded by polluted water, as well as to continue cutting the sedge and other taller vegetation to allow light for seeds to germinate and increase biodiversity. Barbara and Sally started scything whilst Graham helped Eleanor and Dieuwke load their drag sheets, which they heaved along the bund and deposited the cut material to build it up - initially starting on a very muddy area and then along the bund itself. Their trampling would drum it down and compact it. It is important to remove the cut material to prevent nutrient build up as the drier area of the fen would soon be overtaken by nettles, which is not what we want at all. Adrian also helped clear away.
While this was going on, Steph together with Margaret and Lesley collected the roll of chicken wire and using fencing tools started securing the wire in place.
It was soon break time, which was very welcome as moving the cut material was very hard work. As we passed an alder tree, we could spot a couple of hornets going about their business. These were European hornets, the native species, rather than the invasive Asian hornet (sightings of which should be reported to CEH at: https://www.ceh.ac.uk/our-science/citizen-science/asian-hornet). These looked very cheery in their yellow jackets as the sun shone on them - their Asian cousins are much darker, with a waspish waist and have yellow legs, hence they are also known as the yellow-legged hornet. We kept a respectful distance of them and they were completely unfazed by our comings and goings.
It was lovely to see a few flowers still out, including the Devil's Bit Scabious, which is the food plant of the marsh fritillary butterfly. It's delightful blue bobble flowers also give it's nickname of the pincushion flower. One or two hemp agrimony plants were also flowering and some fungi had appeared.
After break, Eleanor and Margaret swapped roles and it was all hands on deck to finish building up the bund. Adrian, being a regular volunteer at Cothill, would work on completing another area of the bund which had been breached during the recent high rainfall with different material - in true beaver fashion!
An area of encroaching bramble was cut back which had not been cut for a couple of years, so that was also good progress. All-in-all, a good morning's work for a relatively low turnout for us and Steph seemed very pleased with what we had achieved.
Comments
Post a Comment