A busman’s holiday in pictures

July 2020 (2)

The gang of four

Over recent months volunteer work has been suspended and is only now getting going again, but remains very limited. Unable to work, four of us have been meeting up on Wednesday mornings for a Gibside wander and opportunity to reminisce. That largely dwells on things we’ve destroyed –rhododendron, western hemlock and Himalayan balsam – and some more positive activities, such as planting hundreds of trees, nurturing heather and encouraging grass snakes to settle down and have a family. And we’ve had time to take a closer look at Gibside’s wildlife. Here are some of our photographs:

Dipper on River Derwent

Leopard slug

Five-spot Burnet moth

A Hoverfly - Volucella pellucens 

A Hoverfly - Volucella zonaria

A Hoverfly - Cryosoxum cautum, having a drink

Pyramidal orchid - the first recorded sighting at Gibside

Time for a relaxing coffee break

Oh dear! - It's Himalayan balsam

Steve Wootten & Phil Coyne

A perfect day

July 2020

There was nothing to be seen on the nest, though the nest itself was worth studying through binoculars. It’s big. We guessed they would have flown by now, but the young are given to popping home from time to time before setting off to make a life for themselves. Mary saw it first – an adult Red Kite perched twenty feet or so up a shattered tree stump. We stood perfectly still. And for a while the kite sat perfectly still, before swooping down not thirty yards in front of us, settled in nearby trees then rose to join another above. Both birds circled briefly then disappeared. We see a lot of red kites around the estate, but the closeness – the colours, the wings, and the huge size – stunned us. Those of us with cameras didn’t have the wit or the presence of mind to use them. Watching such magnificence, it’s easy to picture the kite gracefully rising with some struggling mammal grasped in its talons. They sometimes do things like that. Red kites will take small mammals, worms and insects, and even quite large birds, but primarily they are carrion feeders – competition for the crows that we so often see harrying them.

Red kite

It was a dull, damp day, yet a perfect one. Leap Mill Burn flowed dark under its canopy of trees. We paused at a waterfall where dippers often nest but, unsurprisingly, we saw none. Flowers though were many. Foxgloves, red campion, yellow pimpernel and hedge woundwort framed by pendulous sedge and hard fern.

Yellow pimpernel

Hard fern

Red campion

 

Both sides of the track here are pockmarked with what were probably coal diggings. Bell pits were a common means of mining before the advent of shaft and drift mines. There is a drift mine entrance by the burn well below the track at its highest point and a hollow way connecting them – a vestige of the route used to transport the extracted coal. Today the way is blocked by a barrier of sentinel foxgloves, brash and saplings quick to colonise the unused path.

New tree planting is doing well

At the junction of the track with the upper West Wood track is a bench, and beside the bench an exquisite sculpture of a hare carved in wood. It’s at its best in the rain. We don’t get to see many hares, but they are here. The estate is at its narrowest further along the track, with fields in view on either side – a good location. It’s the only place we have ever seen them.

Hare sculpture

Ringlet butterfly on hedge woundwort leaf

Wood sage

Then came the mist and the rain

Our progress was more tortoise than hare. We ate our sandwiches out of the rain under the shelter of a cedar beside the betony-fringed Octagon Pond, entertained by a little grebe, a family of coots and a procession of baby mallard. Downhill, at the Lily Pond, the lilies were in flower - the perfect shape of the lotus: a perfect day.

Meadow grasshopper

Betony edging The Octagon Pond

Adult and baby coot

Mallard ducklings out for a stroll

Emerging Water lilies

Steve Wootten & Phil Coyne

Regeneration

June 2020

As the National Trust continues with its phased reopening, we made a second visit. Although work for we volunteers still isn’t an option, we nevertheless went on a Wednesday. Terry and Mary from our Wednesday team had gone for the same reason. After fourteen years, it’s habitual. It had been a long time, so there was some catching up and general nattering to be done as we processed down Ice House Dene, along the riverside and to the head of Snipes Dene. Opportunities to reminisce about jobs done and exclaim about what had changed were many. We’d been absent for little more than three months.

Apples in the Walled Garden

Poppies

Poppy seed head

Path along riverside

Terry & Mary in "civvies"

Thigh deep, a solitary fly fisherman stood in the river. We’ve rarely seen any sizable fish in the Derwent, but the resident otters must be eating something, so maybe he was in with a chance we thought. Indeed, two hundred metres downstream fish were jumping. That suggested a coffee stop and a snack. We occasionally acknowledged the splash with a glance and a lifting of the head. Maybe we should have taken a greater interest, but fish – we have to admit - are something else we know little about. Anyway, we had talking to do – catching up talking, not fish catching talking. The giant leaves of butterbur got a mention in passing. It’s good to see it there in its place by the river.

Butterbur leaves

Fisherman 

For some reason butterbur is one of those things that always brings pleasure – like the sighting of roe deer or red kite or moschatel. And it’s not even good looking. A new growth of Himalayan balsam got a passing curse. Attractive as it is, it’s a pest and one we ordinarily devote a great deal of time trying to eliminate. Not this year though: it looks set to have a successful season.

Himalayan balsam - not yet in flower

Ferns

Horsetails

Lunch was scheduled for the bench at the top of Snipes Dene. Clearly the socially distanced five of us weren’t going to fit on it, but it acted as a waymark – always useful when walking up hill. We used to find red bartsia here, but not today. Maybe it was a bit too early; maybe it had finally succumbed to the mowing of the track edge. The National Trust favours neatness even in the wild.

Snipes Dene today is densely wooded. A few years back – 2011 to 2013 our survey records show - we made regular visits to monitor regeneration following removal of the Forestry Commission’s commercial timber crop. In the first season we recorded only thirty-one species, and few of those were present in any number – with the exception of seedlings and saplings of the felled western hemlock which was doing its best to recolonise. Over those years, and a few that followed, it was defeated by lines of rangers and volunteers moving across the hillsides like forensic search teams pulling the interloper out.

With a little extra tree planting to help speed diversity, Snipes Dene has returned to native woodland, and now looks more like its designated status of a Site of Special Scientific Interest.

Snipes Dene, now a dense woodland

Hedge woundwort

Hedge woundwort

Common spotted orchid

Germander speedwell

Back in 2011, foxgloves were a significant and pleasing feature of early Snipes Dene regeneration, and there they are again in great number over in that part of West Wood laid waste by more recent felling. So that’s promising.

Bugles

Foxglove

Foxgloves in West Woods

Helleborines

We can't get back to work yet!

Steve Wootten & Phil Coyne

Enjoy the moment

June 2020

A smallish bee visited a number of cracks and crevices in the crumbling mortar of the backyard wall, seemingly having forgotten where it lived. Every so often, though, it popped into a hole, disappeared for a while, popped back out and started the performance all over again. It was probably a mining bee or a mason bee collecting nesting material. For those of us for whom the insect world is largely a mystery, the guide books are of little or no help – often pointing out that there are another thirty species remarkably like this one. For a more definitive identification, count the hairs on its legs.

A recent things-to-do-in-lockdown email from the Natural History Society of Northumbria suggested taking a closer look at white tailed bumble bees. It turns out that it is not a single species but at least three. And, to further the confusion, buff tailed bumble bee workers have white tails. Best use DNA testing.  Best, perhaps, just to take pleasure in watching that little bee search around the crumbling backyard brickwork midst the ivy-leaved toadflax and something that might be creeping bellflower but probably isn’t.

Ivy-leaved toadflax

Covid-19 and the lockdown have kept visitors, volunteers and most staff out of Gibside (and other places) for eleven or twelve weeks. Last Wednesday, though, began a phased reopening. After as many weeks of wall-to-wall sunshine, it rained. But that didn’t matter. The place looked wonderful. Walking up Leap Mill Burn, the woodland canopy appeared as if underlit by the vibrant green ferns of the understorey. On Octagon Pond, a coot sat on a prominent nest, its elevation exaggerated by its reflection in the water. A little grebe came and went on the pond surface. Everywhere looked lush. The walled garden felt like a deserted village, but still had order and colour, and apples were forming on the trees.  Areas of usually mown grass by the old hall and the orangery, unvisited and neglected, were glowing with meadow flowers.

Woodland canopy

Coot on nest

Little grebe

Orangery

The wilder Walled Garden

The Avenue - that grass needs a "haircut"

On an ordinary working day, it has been our way to take out a note book and record the plants and other wildlife. Clearly, there were lots of yellow rattle and buttercups, but we made no attempt to look closer – content to be still amongst the beauty of it all. You can pursue the detail or just feel free to enjoy the moment.

Yellow rattle

Steve Wootten & Phil Coyne