City dwellers remember

Gibside Blog May 2020

As city dwelling goes, we two are pretty well-placed for greenery with the Park and the Town Moor. And wandering the tree-lined streets of posh-Gosforth is good too, though house envy can be a bit of a struggle. Jesmond Dene is within walking distance, and there other green gems to be rediscovered and explored. Old cemeteries are a favourite - peaceful, beautiful wildlife havens.

As well as being long-serving members of the Gibside Rangers’ Wednesday Volunteer Team, we two also work in our local park where, along with one other amateur naturalist, we look after the Wildlife Area. Currently, of course, all volunteer work has stopped – though there is a little bit of guerrilla nature conservation going on. We can, though, visit the park and our Wildlife Area as members of the public. Whilst mostly that is a great pleasure, it is also frustrating not to be able to provide the care and attention needed – especially at this time of year.

Gosforth Central Park is a public park popular with dog walkers (and their dogs), children, the occasional vandal and the rest of the local population, so we have to strike a balance between managing the area for wildlife and for public access and enjoyment. That creates its own problems. The pond and its immediate surroundings are fenced – dog-proofed and child-proofed, and pretty much safe from big people as well. The rest of the Wildlife Area is open to roam and, without the grass cutting to define paths and protective sticks and string to protect vulnerable vegetation, it is being trampled over and biked on. And pandemic lockdown has brought an increase in footfall. Newly seeded patches have come to nothing for want of rain, and the water level in the pond is worryingly low. But that’s nature for you. The Wildlife Area has a disappointingly meagre population of invertebrates. For example, it seems odd that we have no ants. We would like to do something to remedy that, but not this year, it seems.

The Town Moor Newcastle

Cows on Dukes Moor, Newcastle

Dreaded rhododendrons in Leases Park, Newcastle

Behind the closed gates of the Gibside Estate things are very different. Undisturbed by visitors, wildlife is thriving. We do miss our privileged days there. The Rangers do their bit to keep us in touch with nature, but it’s not the same. To remind us of what we are missing, we’ve been looking back at some of our earlier blog entries for the months of April and May. You can read them for yourself, of course, but here are some extracts and some pictures.


Gibside Blog 29 April 2015: April

Dog’s mercury, though abundant in our woodlands and one of the earliest plants to flower, can go largely unnoticed. Its flowers are small, green and have no petals. As a herald of spring, it doesn’t make much of an impression, but it’s soon joined by other, more impressive, flowers carpeting the woodland floor – golden saxifrage, wood anemone, wood sorrel and ramsons. Elsewhere primrose, lesser celandine, coltsfoot, and dandelion make a fine show.

The oddly delicate moschatel has its five flowers set at right-angles to each other – like clock faces with an extra one on top. Previously recorded along the riverside path and in the woods at the northern end of Ladyhaugh, it has this spring appeared in a swathe near the Lily Pond. It’s small and beautiful but, being almost entirely green, is easily over-looked.
It’s April, and the animal world is preparing for the new season. Frogs have long since spawned, and tadpoles have started to emerge from their gelatinous mess; numerous toads tangle in the ponds, seeking mates; peacock and small tortoiseshell butterflies have started their wanderings; and common carder bumblebees glide the woodland fringes; chiffchaffs seem to be everywhere.

Dog's mercury

Wood anemone

Moschatel

Gibside Blog: 27 April 2016: Spring gets going

Hidden away in the new birch growth in the West Wood, Terry and Steve sought out a large and rather well-constructed log pile. Phil took Terry’s picture standing beside it. This had been the very first job for the Wednesday Conservation Team – nearly ten years ago now. We sized it up, admired its construction, exchanged memories of the day, and tried to remember who had been there with us. Phil looked on politely – neither bored nor in wonder; he’s only been coming here for eight years.

We were in the West Wood, mapping a grass snake site. That is plotting the position of a heap of rotting vegetation which is there to encourage snakes to lay their eggs in a place where we can find them, and noting the position of pieces of corrugated iron sheet which are intended to provide a good warming-up spot for our cold-blooded reptiles. Each sheet is numbered to help us record what we find on it, or under it, during our weekly observations. There are eight such sites around the estate.

A few weeks ago, Ranger Liam helped us set up one of the sites on Warrenhaugh by carting some bales of straw in a vehicle referred to as the ‘Mule’. Going downhill was fine but, job done, the creature couldn’t cope with the wet, stony slope. We pushed it – and Liam - backwards seven-eighths of the way up the hill before admitting defeat, and summoning a Land Rover to tow it the rest of the way. Liam was rightly embarrassed, and would rather people didn’t know about it.

As spring gets going, it’s time for us to abandon our winter labours, and leave nature in peace. From now through to October we will be taking leisurely strolls with binoculars and note book, sandwiches and flask, recording flora and fauna for the Trust’s database. We might even see a grass snake.

Terry stands nest to the log pile

West woods nest heap

The West Woods grass snake site

Gibside Blog 4 May 2016: A new start

Through to mid-morning it was still cool enough to wear our fleece jackets; by lunchtime the temperature had risen to sixteen or seventeen degrees. This year, that counts as hot. We had a few small jobs to get done, but this was the day to return to our summer job of collecting wildlife data around Gibside Estate. What we see, we note. We transfer our notes to a spreadsheet which we add into the Rangers’ data, and all that gets fed into the National Trust databank. It’s a useful task we’re told, but, in truth, we do it because we like to.

In a few weeks, Ladyhaugh will be coloured with meadow flowers. Today we noted a few. Cowslips dominate, along with the odd patch of primrose and a scattering of lesser celandine and dandelion. The margins of the meadow are less showy, but display more variety with a few bluebells, greater stitchwort, garlic mustard, wood anemone, and daisies of course. At the rough, north end, we sought out butterbur - now fading beside the river, and found a patch of ground ivy that we had not noted in previous years. An orange tipped butterfly fluttered by; a welcome start to a new season.

Lesser celandine

Greater stitchwort

Bugles

Butterbur

Gibside Blog 11 May 2016: Out-witting sheep

As a rule, sheep are docile, unimaginative creatures, capable of no more than munching grass all day, reproducing once a year, and occasionally falling over with their feet sticking up in the air. It’s their upbringing, you see. Natural selection has long since been replaced by farmer selection. They are bred for the quality of their meat and wool, their reproductive success rate, and their good looks – so that they can win prizes in agricultural shows. Wit and survival skills are not selection criteria.

It was unexpected then that, after all our hard work, sheep dismantled a gate at the penned-in Warrenhaugh Pond, kicked sticks and straw out of the way, and ate all the green grass cuttings from the grass snake nest heap. It’s repaired now, and defences strengthened using hammer, nails and string. We know how to out-wit sheep.

It wasn't us guv.

The nest heap being repaired

The gate is now repaired

Gibside blog April - May 2017: Grass snake (Natrix natrix)

The new tins had been numbered with Roman numerals. One of the rangers must have done that. They’re a sophisticated lot. We’ve been back in one of the more remote parts of the Gibside woodland, cutting back the tangle of bramble and honeysuckle that had taken advantage of the clearings we had carved out earlier in the year. We lopped down a few more birches while we were on, to let in more light. It is grass snake time again, and we were there to set up a new monitoring site in addition to the eight already dotted around the estate.

This site is a bit out of the way, bordered north and south by intermittent streams, and surrounded by trees – oak, rowan, ash, beech, wych elm, holly, hazel and lots of birch. Though predominantly trees, there are margins – streamside, field edge, nearby track side and, of course, the clearings themselves – where non-woody flowering plants thrive. Here there are bluebells, wood sorrel, ramsons, primrose, yellow pimpernel and the exquisite moschatel. In some parts, people refer to grass snakes as water snakes. Hereabouts there are a few ponds, and we’re not too far from the River Derwent – though it is uphill all the way. The streams might help.

Anyway, with it being a new patch, it has new ACOs – artificial cover objects that is: bits of corrugated iron. These days they’re made of some other material, but we just call them tins.

The tins are there because, underneath, they make an ideal grass snake shelter and, on top, a fine basking place, making any snakes more visible to the observer. The numbers aid recording. And Natrix natrix might well be tempted by the Roman numerals, but don’t count on it.

Log pile covered in honeysuckle

A lovely wych elm tree near site entrance

Bluebells

Yellow pimpernel

Ramsons

Gibside Blog March to May 2019: It’s that time of year

Just the day before, Ranger Helen had watched three red kites squabbling high above Gibside. Engaged in a dog fight (for want of a better metaphor), the two males locked talons and plummeted into the trees, risking serious injury in pursuit of a mate. Late March: it’s that time of year.

In the Ice House Woods blackbirds scuttled and a couple of wrens flitted around in path-side shrubs. Wood anemones planted in their thousands here last autumn are pushing up their first leaves among the first signs of wood sorrel and cuckoo pint. Dog’s mercury, lesser celandine and yew are in flower. A nuthatch rehearses being noisy and appealing. At a distance trees still look wintery but, here in the woods and along the Avenue, they too are unfurling their leaves in readiness for the start of nature’s year.

In the air above the Octagon Pond, a buzzard, red kite and kestrel all appeared at the same moment separated vertically and horizontally by some invisible air controller. It was a photo lost to a slow camera and a slower wit. On the pond, coots were preparing to nest. In the pond were frogs, frogspawn and knots of toads. It’s that time of year.

On a rainy day that ought to have kept us at home, we wandered Ice House Dene Woods once more to check out the wood anemone. It was cold - exceptionally cold for May. There was a gentle breeze that nevertheless allowed the rain to fall straight down in a tolerable fashion, pleasant even. We walked on to the riverside by Ladyhaugh. Ranger Phil had seen otters here recently, but not today. We were cheered, though, by the sighting of a dipper mid-stream and a roe deer grazing in the open – made bolder with the rain keeping visitors and dog walkers away.

We wandered on making a mental note of plants and birds, and stopped off in the dry of the bird hide to write down what we could remember over a sandwich and cup of coffee. Bedraggled woodpeckers monopolised the feeders. Below, a young chaffinch was being fed by mum. It’s that time of year.

Nuthatch

Wood sorrel flower heads

Toads "tying the knot"

A mass of bluebells on the edge of Ladyhaugh

Horsetails - Lily Pond

Coot on nest with young - Octagon Pond

Hawthorn beginning to flower

There will be plenty of work to do when we eventually return to Gibside. Meanwhile we hope that you enjoyed the blast from the past.

Keep safe. Keep healthy.

Steve Wootten & Phil Coyne