Farnham Heath

You can count on wildlife

2013-04-11T16:41:25Z

Working for the RSPB can feel just like working for anyone else really. Phone calls, e-mails, paperwork - the usual office grind. There are good days and bad days. Today was shaping up to be in the latter category. However, where it does differ from other jobs is that I can say "Blow this, I'm going round the reserve". Which is exactly what I did this afternoon, when the sun (remember that? Big yellow thing. Warm) made an appearance.

Set off, stomping around, muttering under my breath about the aforementioned daily grind. Eventually nature worked it's magic, and my mood lifted. The wind cleared my head and I started to listen to the birdsong. There was a skylark singing from the field next door, then, not to be outdone, a woodlark treated me to some of that mellow flute-y song magic. That seemed to annoy it's neighbour because that pair came over to investigate, and there was a flurry of calling and bursts of song as the two pairs attempted to settle just whose territory it was.

To cap it all, I checked on a bank where I saw adders last summer. I crept along as quietly as I could (not easy wearing steel toecapped safety boots through dead bracken stems!) and found three absolutely beautiful snakes basking in the weak spring sunshine. Adders are stunningly attractive animals when you get a good look at them. After a minute of watching me watching them, they got bored and one by one disappeared back under an old stump.

Wildlife does that - it makes a bad day into a good one. It lifts the spirits and restores the soul. That's why it's important. Not just for it's own sake, but because we need it for our own well being.

And that, gentle reader, is what the RSPB is for. I just need to remind myself of that next time I'm cursing the number of e-mails!

Welcome back!

2013-02-15T18:54:06Z

Over the last fortnight there have been a few warning signs. The odd short burst of that wonderful "liquid honey" song, a bird quickly calling as it disappeared off into the wide blue yonder, so it shouldn't have come as a surprise. But it was, as it so often is, a simple joy to experience it in full flood today. What am I rambling about? Woodlarks! (you might have guessed).

Today was the first day when it seemed spring might be more than a distant rumour. The sun was shining, temperatures got up into double figures - and woodlarks were singing. That's woodlarks, plural. At one point I could hear 4 four singing at once, and for more than two hours this morning, while I went about my work with the regular volunteers, there were always 3 singing. Glorious, simply glorious.

These wonderful songsters leave the heaths in the winter, spending the coldest months feeding on farmland. Birds that breed in the Surrey /Hants. area don't seem to move more than a few kilometres, but birds from E. Anglia move down to the West country. They come back to the heaths and recent clear felled areas in some large forestry blocks to set up territory about now - and very welcome they are too, after a miserable, wet winter!

Last summer wasn't the best breeding season, due to the poor weather - how will our woodlarks fare this year? We'll have to wait and see. As always, we'll be encouraging the many dog walkers that use the reserve to play their part by keeping their pet under control and on the paths. As a ground nesting species, woodlarks are very vulnerable to disturbance, and dog owners can make a real contribution to conservation by showing some consideration..

It's not dead - just sleeping!

2012-11-30T18:14:34Z

Despite being someone who's "done heaths" for almost my entire career in nature conservation, even I have to admit that the reserve doesn't look it's best at this time of year. The heather has turned into a shaggy brown carpet, there are no insects buzzing away, and bird life can seem to be restricted to some wintering meadow pipits and the usual indefatigable stonechats, determined to bring a splash of colour to an otherwise dull scene. But to me, that's part of the joy of the place, that contrast between a seemingly almost lifeless vista in the winter, and the way it fizzes with life once the spring arrives. Of course, one of the beauties of a heath is that spring will come early. By February, the woodlarks will be back, and clear days will be livened up by that wonderful mellow song.

Of course, there's more to Farnham Heath than just the heath. Out in the wooded areas, there are flocks of the common woodland birds seeking food, and every so often you catch a glimpse of a flash of pink, white and blue as a jay flies off. Jays really are beautiful, and they play a really important role in woodland ecology - across Britain millions of oak trees owe their start in life to an acorn that a jay buried and then couldn't find again! Those oaks support a huge range of wildlife, and it's all down to a bird that's often maligned for it's habit of eating eggs and chicks. On balance jays probably do a lot more long term good than short term harm.

Icing on the cake!

2012-09-17T17:22:29Z

We managed to put another piece of the heathland jigsaw back together today. Ever since we started to restore the heath, one of the best bits about my job has been seeing how the heathland wildlife returned. Over the years, as areas of heath have matured, more and more of the typical heathland species have turned up, under their own steam, as it were. Obviously there was a small snag with our policy of letting things make their own way back - for less mobile species, especially those without wings, it was always a big ask. This is particularly the case now that heaths are sadly reduced to isolated patches, scattered across the landscape, rather than the vast, continuous areas of habitat our forebears knew.

So, what to do for those key heathland species that would struggle to get here unaided? Translocation could be the answer. We did it earlier for field crickets, and that seems to have been a success (several fingers crossed as I type that!), so today, working with conservation partners Amphibian and Reptile Conservation, we released 35 captive bred juvenile sand lizards onto the reserve. The intention is to repeat that for the next two autumns as well, using roughly similar numbers of juveniles. Hopefully that will be enough to get a population going. Sand lizards are very rare in the UK, and with the exception of some populations on sand dunes on Merseyside, confined to heathland. The adult males are a fantastic vivid green during the spring, so they will be well worth looking out for when they are mature in a couple of years time. At this stage in their lives both sexes are well camouflaged, which is ideal as they are very vulnerable to predation, at least until the captive bred youngsters become more "street wise" about the dangers of being out in the big wide world.

And, as if getting sand lizards back wasn't good enough, this afternoon I saw, and heard, a young Dartford warbler! Bingo! Full House! Obviously one Dartford on it's own doesn't mean much, but hopefully it will stick around until spring and attract a mate. Now that really would be the icing on the cake!

Where did the time go?

2012-07-18T10:02:44Z

It's been just over ten years since the RSPB bought what is now Farnham Heath. Ten years! Really? I've been privileged to work on this project from the beginning, and in that time I've seen the transformation of a commercial conifer plantation into a heath. There have been lots of highlights, but for me the best one, the real "punch the air moment" was the May evening in 2006 when I first heard a nightjar churring from the restored heath. Nightjars are, I think, the reason I do the job - there is something magical about them. Which makes this year all the more frustrating. The number of churring males is at an all time high (6), and I've seen females as well, so it should have been a brilliant breeding season. Sadly the weather has probably put paid to that. Nightjars need moths, and other nightflying insects, and there just haven't been many around. I suspect there will be relatively few chicks successfully reared this year. Still, no reason to be too down hearted, all these species have evolved to cope with the odd poor year. They'll bounce back, provided we keep the habitat in good nick.

On a brighter note, we had a little "do" to mark that 10 year anniversary, with a lunch for volunteers and supporters at the neighbouring museum, followed by a walk around the reserve. The rain held off (which was great - especially because lunch was in a marquee!), there were woodlarks and tree pipits performing well out on the heath, and everyone had a good time. Here's to the next 10 years!

A big thank you...

2012-06-01T16:43:04Z

I reckon that reserves run, essentially, on two things:- money and sweat. Neither of which can be provided exclusively by the reserve staff, so this is a chance to say a big THANK YOU to those colleagues in the fundraising bit of the RSPB, without whom I wouldn't have any money to spend! As for the sweat, well, an even bigger debt of gratitude is owed to the brilliant, fantastic, truly wonderful bunch of people who volunteer here at Farnham Heath. Thanks to you all. Every May I'm asked to give the regional office some idea of the number of hours worked by the volunteers over the preceding year. A quick back of the envelope calculation later and I'm looking at a fairly impressive number of hours! Altogether "my" volunteers give over 3350 hours of their time to Farnham Heath. That's the equivalent of 2 full time members of staff! Outstanding!

If you want to know more about what the volunteers do here, and why they do it, , there's a short piece on the video blog featuring just a few of them. You can view it here http://youtu.be/cs9Jgtwj6L8

Feelin' blue...

2012-05-24T17:11:00Z

I had to check out a couple of jobs for tomorrow's volunteer work party, so I took the chance to wander over a part of the reserve I don't visit as often as I do some other parts, if you see what I mean. There was a general blue theme - the bluebells were still going strong, and the tracks were covered in flowers, almost all of them blue -ish. There were literally thousands of flowering spikes of bugle, but scattered in amongst that there was ground ivy, germander and heath speedwells, and field and changing forget -me-nots. That last one was a bit of a cheat really - the flowers start off yellow and only turn blue later on. So, if I'm being totally honest there was a little bit of pale yellow in amongst the blue. Either way it was a really impressive sight, and no, I didn't have a camera!

The 10 th Anniversary preparations are going well. The second instalment of our video blog is available here http://youtu.be/67XubRa8aHI This one is about the successes of the Project so far, some of them at any rate. Enjoy.

Funny old spring....

2012-05-17T16:51:36Z

You've probably noticed! A scorching March, followed by a cold wet April and May has certainly had an impact on the reserve. It's not been all bad - the rain has helped some heather to germinate in the blocks we cleared in 2010. However the bluebell display has been a bit below par - the plants seem a little shorter, and more spindly than last year. Nevertheless, there is still a carpet of blue in places, and, when the wind drops, you can still fill your nostrils with that sweet scent. Marvellous. Of course, being out on the reserve just reminds me of the work we'll need to do, come the winter. The plan is to coppice some more of the chestnut woods. This will create temporary clearings, letting in a lot more light, and hopefully boosting the bluebells for next year.

My big worry was whether the cold conditions had killed off the field crickets. Re-introduced populations are most vulnerable in the early years of the programme, before the numbers have built up, and conditions this spring have been far from ideal. However, this afternoon I heard 6 calling males, so some at least have survived. Now all we need is some decent weather for egg laying.

This is the 10th anniversary of the Farnham Heath reserve. Happy birthday to us! The site has changed from a commercial conifer plantation to a rather nice bit of heath, even if I do say so myself ! More importantly this year there are 9 pairs of woodlark, 8 pairs of tree pipit and 5 pairs of stonechats that agree! Too early to tell how many nightjars this year...

As part of the celebrations, we've put together a "video blog" about the place. You can find it at http://youtu.be/8QI83ry4R_I

Early birds, and all that..

2012-03-05T13:31:37Z

There are still crossbills around at the moment. They're no longer in the flocks they were in either, now you are more likely to come across pairs, and, as well as their distinctive call, males can be heard singing from the tops of pines. Crossbills breed very early - I've had a report of a pair with eggs from a neighbouring site more than a fortnight ago! Birds have been seen carrying nest material here as well, so I'm hopeful that they are breeding on the reserve.

Another early breeder is the woodlark. They have been singing and claiming territory for a couple of weeks as well. It is very early days, but I'm going to stick my neck out and say that we are going to have more pairs this year than last...Time will tell. Not to be outdone, stonechats are also making their way back to the heath here, from wherever they have spent the winter. They aren't really migrants, but many stonechats will spend the winter down on the coast, where it is generally slightly warmer. It's good to see them back.

While stonechats are arriving, we've said farewell to the Exmoor ponies that have spent the winter here. We "borrowed" them from the Surrey Heathland Project, and they did a great job for us. We will be releasing some more field crickets here in the spring, this time in one of the areas open to the public, and the ponies have been preparing the ground by getting the grass short, breaking up the bramble patches and creating small bare areas. However, as the saying goes "their work here is done", so they've been taken off to do good elsewhere.

This year will mark the 10th anniversary of the reserve. I'm really hoping that 2012 will be a memorable breeding season for all our heathland specialities, those with feathers, and without, to really commemorate the occasion!

Let it snow, let it snow - not!

2011-12-20T18:02:29Z

Sorry to come over all "Bah humbug" as the festive season looms, but I (and I suspect a lot of other heathland managers) am really hoping for a mild winter. The poor old Dartford warblers in particular would really struggle if we had another period of prolonged snow cover. Looking at the figures for the Thames Basin Heaths, which are scattered across north Surrey, east Berkshire and north east Hampshire you can really see the impact of recent harsh winters - in 2008 there were over 600 pairs, but in 2011 there were less than 50 pairs. It's a similar picture on some other heathland areas in SE England as well. Fortunately they weren't hit quite so badly elsewhere in their UK range, so there is a good chance of recovery, provided we get some mild winters. We have been here before - after the famously severe winter of '62/'63, there were less than 20 pairs in the country! They came back from that, so they'll bounce back again IF the winters stay mild. Of course my entomologist friends are hoping for a cold winter, because that will increase the chances of the field cricket nymphs successfully overwintering. It seems that you can't win with wildlife! Still, no-one said this conservation lark was supposed to be easy....

As might be expected it's pretty quiet out on the reserve at the moment, except for the crossbills. It seems to be a very good year for them here, with flocks of up to 20 regularly seen. Other winter visitors include large numbers of siskin (only a few redpoll this year), often in the larches. There was a very brief visit from a Great Grey Shrike on the 19th of November. It was only around for a morning, but it was a wonderful bird to see. Ironically, just the previous week I had been joking with one of the volunteers that this year we'd get the first shrike for the reserve!

Autumn already!

2011-10-07T17:12:27Z

The unseasonal warm sunny weather seems to have left our Farnham woodlarks a little confused. They are singing as if it's the spring - not that I'm complaining, as I think the woodlark has one of the most beautiful songs of any British bird. It's a pure mellow, "fluting" kind of song. The scientific name for this songster is Lullula arborea, and the first part of the name is based on the song. The french name for woodlark is Lulu, again, based on the song. I wonder how many fans of a certain popular female entertainer are aware of the connection with this heathland bird?

Whatever the woodlarks might think, it's very definitely autumn. Despite the dry weather, there are lots of fungi about, including one of the rarest species at Farnham, a little thing called Spathularia flavida.It doesn't have an English name, but you'll have to imagine something like very small yellow teaspoons sticking out of the ground. It's more often found in Scottish pine forests, but we usually see a few here each autumn. Another conifer associate currently making itself very obvious is the crossbill. Parties of up to 20 can be found moving around the areas of pine woodland that we have kept on the site. Because they have a very dry diet,exclusively conifer seeds, crossbills are often attracted to puddles and ponds to drink, so the area around our small pond is a good place to see them.

Autumn is also the start of the busiest time for the volunteers on the reserve (not that I don't try to keep them busy the rest of the year as well!). This is when we can tackle the all - important scrub control work. This season we will be clearing scrub from about seven hectares of the reserve. The regulars have been assisted by two teams from HSBC, each of 25 people, and there is a third HSBC group booked in for later this month. The scrub won't know what hit it!

It's not all about birds you know...

2011-07-12T14:07:49Z

I'ts sometimes said that "the RSPB is only interested in birds". It isn't actually the case - our reserves provide a home for a huge variety of wildlife, and our reserve management work aims to protect all nature. Here at Farnham we've been busy protecting scarce plants, creating homes for reptiles, and watching butterflies.

The plant concerned is Heath Cudweed. Frankly, it isn't much to look at, but it is scarce, so we need to look after it. Last year was a bit of a disaster, as every single flowering head was eaten off by something (possibly muntjac deer). So, this year my trusty volunteers build a barricade around a group of plants, to ensure that some of them at least would be able to flower and set seed. So far, it seems to be working, but Heath Cudweed flowers late in the season, so we'll have to wait and see. We'll also have to wait and see if our reptile work is a success. One possible factor in the national decline in Adder numbers is a lack of suitable places for them to hibernate, so we've built one for them here at Farnham. Essentially it's a pit full of rubble, topped with logs, then smaller branches, and finally soil, with a few openings so that the animals can get in and wriggle their way down to the nooks and crannies between the stones and logs. If it is used, we'll be able to find the snakes basking around the hibernation site in the spring.

The butterflies have been Silver washed fritillaries, just one of the 25 species that have been recorded on the reserve (so far - we keep finding new ones!) They are the largest of our fritillary species, with a powerful, swooping flight. They roost high up in trees but come down to the ground to feed on bramble flowers and for the females to find patches of violets. This is their caterpillar's main food plant, so when a female finds a good patch of suitable violets she will lay her eggs on the nearest tree.

Of course, I couldn't write a blog piece and not mention birds at all...so, I've been especially please to have confirmation of not just one, but two successful pairs of redstart this year. We had one pair on the southern section, Tankersford, and one on the main block. Both have been seen feeding recently fledged chicks. Brilliant.

Noisy evenings, hopefully...

2011-05-26T18:02:39Z

Goatsuckers. Fern-owl. Eve-jar. Over the years nightjars have been called by a lot of different names in different parts of the country, but they say that "a rose by any name would smell as sweet". In this case, that should be "a nightjar by any name would be ab-so-lutely ruddy brilliant!" I am, I must confess, slightly biased - nightjars are my favourite bird, and it's probably their fault that I got into heaths, and thus, indirectly, that I'm writing this blog!

Nightjars are strange birds - they perch along branches, rather than across them like "normal" birds and are nocturnal, funneling moths and other night flying insects into their large gape with bristles around the base of the bill. During courtship/territorial flights they clap their wings together behind their backs. Yes, in flight. Impressive or what? You usually see them at dusk, although they are equally active just around dawn. The best thing is their song, a wonderful throbbing, rhythmic purring note, that rises and falls as the bird turns its head from side to side. To be on a heath on a summers evening, as the light fades and that marvellous sound starts up - it is, quite simply, the sound of summer for me, and for a lot of other people. Certainly our nightjar walk is always one of the most popular.

Nightjars were one of our key target species back when the RSPB started transforming the conifer plantations here back to heathland. They came back pretty much bang on cue, and last summer we had 5 males churring here. It's still fairly early days, but I heard three on Tuesday of this week, and I still haven't checked out all the reserve. Hopefully numbers will continue to increase.

Also had some good news this spring about our field cricket translocation project. So far I've heard a peak count of 9 calling male crickets, which proves that they successfully bred last summer, and that some of those young survived the winter. In warm weather crickets will call into the evening, so what with them and the nightjars here's hoping that summer evenings will get really noisy around here!

a small, brown miracle

2011-04-07T10:57:00Z

Ted Hughes wrote "they've made it again, which shows the globe's still working" to descibe the wonder of the return of migrant birds. OK, he was referring specifically to swifts, but I reckon we could say the same about any of our migrants, which are currently pouring back into Britain from winter quarters in sub Saharan Africa. Like many heathland site managers, here at Farnham I eagerly await two in particular, tree pipit and nightjar. Nightjars are amongst the latest to return and it won't be worth coming out to listen for those strange nocturnal visitors until late May. Tree pipits are sadly now a Red list species, declining rapidly in the UK. Here at Farnham we're bucking the trend, with eight pairs last year, up from 1 in 2004, but that was last year - what will this year bring? I was getting a little anxious when it reached early April without any sign, but I needn't have worried - on Monday of this week, there he was, a tiny scrap of feathered life, having crossed the Sahara, the Med, the whole of continental Europe, to find a dead pine in the middle of my heath. Perhaps he was even the same bird that used that tree as a song perch last year? For something that small, to have made a journey that long - that's as close to a miracle as I'll ever see. And yet we take it for granted! How weird is that?

Since that first arrival, four more tree pipits have turned up, so we could well end up with at least as many as last year once migration is over. Lots of other signs of spring - green tiger beetles scuttling along paths, grass snakes and slow worms as well as adders basking, and up to four buzzards circling at any one time. Stonechats appear to have come through the winter unscathed, with five pairs this year, up from only 3 last year.

All in all, it's looking like it will be a good year. Bring on the nightjars!

Apologies and an update, at last

2011-03-03T15:23:00Z

First off - SORRY. It's been ages since I updated this. So, what's been happening since the autumn? Loads. To begin with, we have now completed the heathland restoration work on the publicly accessible parts of the reserve. This means that this will have been the last winter when visitors will have to contend with all the inevitable dispruption such work brings with it. We cleared another 12 hectares (30 acres) and, although I'm naturally biased, it's looking good out there. We tried something different this year - on part of the clear fell we got in a "mulcher" to dispose of the brash etc. This monster machine reduced the unsaleable branches and stumps to, well, mulch. The mulch was then scraped up, along with the pine litter that had built up over the years, and removed to the edge of the clear fell. This should result in an absolutely fantastic amount of young heather coming through over the next year.

We have borrowed three New Forest Ponies, called Bracken, Willow and Erica, to give us some greater variety in our grazing management. The ponies, nicknamed the "ladies who munch" seem very happy out on the reserve, and not even slightly bothered about people or dogs. THey have proved very popular with the visiting public, and have generated lots of good publicity for the reserve. More importantly they appear to be doing exactly what we want them to do in terms of grazing and browsing.

In terms of wildlife on the reserve, heathland birds such as woodlark and stonechat are getting ready for the breeding season, while there are still flocks of winter visitors like siskins and redpoll in the woods. Spring is definitely on the way though - I saw my first adder of the year yesterday!