The Blakemoor pondlife ideal home exhibition

 

Loss of habitat is one of the main threats to our wildlife. Mostly the loss is not intended to hit the species involved but simply the result of how we use and re-use the landscape. Habitat recreation can be tricky. Ancient woodland is impossible without a time machine and most landscapes take time and expertise: reed cutters, hardy sheep, nest creation.....It's all a lot of effort. However ponds are just about the easiest habitat there is, something anyone can do. Much of the advice that used to worry would be pond diggers turns out to be not essential. Once upon a time it seemed that ponds always have to be large and deep, over 1 metre certainly so frogs didn’t freeze, and with stepped edges like an inverted Mayan temple to make sure you got all the different plant zones.

Thankfully most of these problems turn out to be myths, well and truly nailed by Pond Action (now the Freshwater Habitats Trust. They have lots of excellent information and advice at http://www.freshwaterhabitats.org.uk/habitats/pond/). Shallow, temporary, small ponds do very well for many plants and animals, although fish may be the exception. Good water quality certainly helps, and also ponds created in clusters so you get a bit of variety. It is surprising just how varied adjacent ponds can become. Nor do you have to worry about getting the ponds planted up. They will colonise rapidly and over doing the planting can miss out the earlier pioneer stages as beetles and bugs explore the new opportunities. Given how easy it is to create new ponds and how rich they are in wildlife it is the one thing everybody should do.

Here are some fine new ponds in a field corner just by the entrance to Blakemoor Farm. This is a wet  hollow, more or less where the road to Cresswell sometimes floods over. Rather than dig out the whole area (which would be a shame… the wet grassland is valuable in its own right) they have put in a cluster of ponds. They look a bit gaunt and square at this stage, but that is just how we see the world: the bugs and plants do not fret about the geometry of an ideal home. Great to see some pro-active, thoughtfully done habitat creation. These are ponds to be proud of.



The sands of Druridge Bay: a reverse egg timer

 

The mysterious linear  pond at the country park does seem to be an anti-tank ditch, one of many disconcerting objects and shapes scattered along the Bay.

There are other questions prompted by the report on the historic environment of  the Bay (Check out at http://www.aenvironment.co.uk/downloads/Druridge%20Bay%20Management%20Plan.pdf)

For example the map above is from Armstrong 1769, part of the report and more of less the area of the Bay for which Banks the mining company are hoping to develop as a new open cast. At the southern end of the map is “Blakemoor Hall”, and, maybe “Cook esq”. I am not sure what the Hall could be (if anyone knows I'd be grateful to hear), having always assumed the row of houses at Blakemoor farm, just as you walk into the hide at Cresswell lagoon, are much more recent with no older structures of any substance. However the farm outbuildings are older looking. There is also a road that meanders out onto the beach from Cresswell, heading north, suggesting more use and industry than you’d find there today, barring the occasional sand extraction excursion at Hemscott.

 

For such a walked, watched and loved stretch of coastline there remain many uncertainties. From the Neolithic footprints in the peat beds and flooded forest stumps, through the medieval at Chibburn to the WW2 pill boxes the Bay seems to capture time. Whereas an egg timer’s sand marks the tumbling progress of the time it seems that at Druridge Bay the sands clog and mire the passing years and hold all these fragments  in a jumble of half forgotten histories.

The Bay during war time: crusader knights, French pirates and anti tank ponds

Peaceful, tranquil…

Druridge Bay attracts many of the descriptions we associate with natural and fairly empty wild places. Put aside for a moment that inland of the dunes the terrain is intensively farmed or the restored sites of old open cast mines: the contemporary Bay is steeped in a mix of big skies, ceaseless breeze and seaward horizon. For me though the Bay has always had a slightly curious feel: for example this blog on 23^rd February with Robson Green, his polite skinny dippers and other users of the Bay a few entries ago. Another of the unsettling elements of the landscape are the hints at a militarized past. The anti-tank blocks on the beach itself arte the most obvious, but there are also scatted pill boxes and block houses plus, best of all, the deceptively reworked ruins of Chibburn Preceptory which sports gun slits added at the start of World War 2. The Preceptory is associated with the Knights Hospitallers of St John , a military order founded in the Crusades so the more recent military ruins are nothing new. The original Preceptory building was also fortified including a moat, so the more recent additions of gun-ports and observation slits are not so anomalous. The site even had an unfortunate encounter with French pirates in 1691who ravaged Widdrington. However most of the military remains are not so old although they lie half buried. The sand has covered many of them over and the occasional pill box tumbles out of the dunes in the wake of a storm.

One unexpected outcome is that the second world war created some ponds along the dunes. I’m not sure but if anyone knows I’d like to find out. In several places, notably just out on the dunes by the Country Park, are long, narrow, fairly straight and steep ditches, as in the photo above. I’ve never seen anything like this in any dunes anywhere; they look like they were excavated on purpose, although in amongst these tumbling dune scapes it is hard to work out what the purpose could be. They might well be an antitank ditch. They hold water well and provide a refuge for wetland plants and animals as many of the shallower dune pools dry out.

You can find out much more about the military architecture of the Bay in a superb report which includes some delightful old maps http://www.aenvironment.co.uk/downloads/Druridge%20Bay%20Management%20Plan.pdf

Peaceful… tranquil…. But hinting at a more ominous past

If you know what those ditches are please let me know

History repeats itself at the Hauxley pond time machine

 

Most ecological research is done in the here and now: what lives where, how many of them are there, what are they doing? There is an immediacy to ecology, which is one of its strengths because so many people are ecologists, even if they may think of themselves as birders or butterfly lovers or wild flower cultivators. Ecology as a rigorous science has also struggled with history, not least because of the lack of long term data. This is one of the reasons that so much work done by amateurs is so very important. The long term data we have in the UK for birds and butterflies is mostly the work of dedicated amateurs, many of whom have an expertise that shames those of us paid to do ecology. Regulars to this blog will know that time features large in our work up at Druridge Bay and the Hauxley pond time machine is beginning to reveal new data. The photo above is one of the ponds in February 2015, originally dug out in 1994 and re-dug in 2014 as part of our work on carbon capture. The pond today looks much like it did in its early years in the late 1990s, with the branched alga stonewort (Chara species) re-appearing in thick swards. Below is a photo of the pond from ten years ago in 2004 with a Chara bed across much of the bottom.

 

Chara species are famously early colonists of newly dug sites. It looks like ecological history is repeating itself rather than the pond being able to miss out these pioneer stages and return rapidly to being choked by moss and grasses. Before it was re-dug last year it was filled by a thick sward of amphibious grasses, rushes and moss. The other ponds around about still are like, twenty years on from being first excavated, for example:

 

 

It might have been possible for the grasses, sedges and mosses to get back into the re-dug pond very quickly, since they have nearby bridgeheads in other ponds from which to re-colonise, but no. Perhaps they will still arrive a bit faster than in the previous twenty year sequence. So far though it looks like history does matter

From Druridge Bay to Roman York, via the Lizard Peninsular

Most of our work focuses on Druridge Bay: monitoring how the communities of invertebrates change over the years in ponds at Hauxley, how the number of wetlands  at Ellington Farm (the new Crown Estates name for Blakemoor Farm) vary with rainfall and quantifying the carbon capture across different pond types throughout the Bay. The ponds and wetlands certainly bury more carbon than the other habitats such as pasture or arable fields, but we need to check if that holds true in different regions of the UK or else we can’t say much beyond just the detail we have for Druridge. Pete and Scott have been venturing further afield, first to the Lizard Peninsular in Devon where many of the wetlands are technically Mediterranean, at least in their plant life. Last week Pete was down in Yorkshire, with the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust taking sediment cores from small ponds on Askham Bog. The Bog is on the outskirts of York, and has long been used for peat digging and livestock, but retains a mysterious feel, especially amongst the denser scrub where a wrong turning can have you face to face with half wild horses. I don’t know which half is wild, though when I met them a few years back the front ends seemed plenty dangerous enough. Pete opted for cores from slightly less hazardous terrain, distinctive small rectangular ponds, some inside an enclosure which creates the undignified impression that he is a type of livestock.

 

The pond’s origins are uncertain, with some suggestions that these may be peat excavations going back as far as Roman York. The important criterion for selecting these sites is their small size. We want to characterise the carbon dynamics of smaller wetlands because these are the ones missing from carbon budgets, although such wetlands are ubiquitous and numerous. The Lizard and Askham Bog are lowland sites, to match the broad landscape of Druridge. We also plan to include some sites in Norfolk, which should add a hotter, drier biogeography into the mix. Lowland Northumberland, Yorkshire, Norfolk and Devon will make a good start to capture the variation in carbon burial around the country.  The differences between wetlands around Druridge Bay is striking. Regional variations from cool northern, to hot southern should only add to this mix

The hebridean inhabitants of Hauxley

Winter’s grip is loosening. The ground is still sodden, and scabbed over with dead flower stems and grass blades barely green from the cold but the air is full of bird song. The little birds have kicked off, finches  and buntings, tree sparrows and wrens. Work is well underway at Hauxley too, on the new straw build hide. The burning down of the old hide turned out to be a blessing. It was a beautiful wooden building, substantial and snug. I still treasure the strange grand opening breakfast as the great and the good of respectable Northumberland squeezed into its main room for scrambled eggs and bacon. With so many more people coming to Hauxley it rapidly became obvious that a bigger building would be better with classrooms and a cafe so that the bacon and eggs were not a one off.

The western edge of the reserve has been enlarged too now, following a land purchase and a flock of pretty Hebridean sheep are now at work grazing, or they would be if they did not follow any passer- by in the hope of a feed. They have the deepest brown wool, fluffed up akin to a Cruft’s poodle and propelled on delicate legs so that from a distance they appear to be animated woollen bobbles that have come adrift from a hat. The new land is largely stark grassland, but like so much nature conservation think ten or twenty years ahead. New woodland and scrub will form a rich fringe to the reserve and hopefully saline grassland can take over the inundated edges. Room for some new ponds too, perhaps larger, permanent ones in contrast to the shallow flashes and pools that already ring the car park. A mix is best. The winter flashes around the car park area riot of summer flowers but some deeper ponds would be good for submerged species such as Potamogeton pondweeds. Meantime the JCB started work levelling and preparing the brow where the old hide was incinerated. You can check progress on the Wildlife Trust’s special straw build Facebook group; the videos may by students from Hirst Park Middle school are a joy. Here’s the link https://www.facebook.com/HauxleyNatureReserve

Nature and the naturists: Druridge Bay as the last outpost before respectable Northumberland

Despite the many kilometres of written text in wildlife conservation manuals, or terabytes of e-text detailing how to manage sites, one subject which affects many a nature reserve is missing from the literature:  nature reserves and nudists. It is largely a coastal specialism, a bit like salt marshes and barnacles; I doubt there are many regular naturist spots on Cheviot.  However for anyone responsible for sand dune sites around the coast of Britain the sights you can see in sand dunes can be a source of problems. There have been some famous nature versus naturist clashes, Dawlish warren in Devon the most well known. A key point is that the naturists have often been there first, it is the conservationists who are the interlopers. Those of you who watched Robson Green’s  “More Tales From Northumberland” on the 16^th will have been treated to a flash of dune nudity as skinny dippers braved the North sea for what has now been established as a regular North East Skinny Dip, a charity fund raiser.  Cheeky, but not really naturists. However the Bay does have a longer standing, more discrete nudist scene. You’ll not see it sign posted or on TV, for it is not entirely respectable, not sanctioned nor tame. Which is part of the charm of the Bay. I regularly drive up to Druridge Bay and the journey north from Newcastle is an odd mix. All the way up, until beyond Lynemouth you are still in the gravitational pull of the industrial north east. Even if there isn’t the industry anymore, the culture and history has roots deep into the ground and the coal. With this culture a love of the countryside, but not respectable: pigeons and ferreting, rough shooting and angling. North of Amble respectable Northumberland begins, almost exactly with the area of Outstanding Natural beauty designation. In-between lies the Bay, a transition, scarred but created by industry, shifting with the tides, sinking over the coal seams, with silent smelters and anti-tank bocks. A contentious arc of very different opinions and delights.  Part of the bay’s character. The respectable skinny dippers are a fleeting presence: the Bay has other heritages too.