It’s that time of year

March to May 2019

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.

Nuthatch

Wood sorrel

Wood anemone leaves emerging

Wood sorrel flowers

Wood anemone in flower 

Although the grass had barely had chance to grow, somebody was playing with a new lawnmower; a machine that looks like a hybrid miniature of a bin lorry and combine harvester – a combined harbinger of spring, perhaps.

The new lawnmower in action

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.

Toads "tying the knot"

Five weeks on, 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.

Bluebells on the edge of Ladyhaugh

Horsetails in Lily Pond

Hawthorn just coming into flower

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.

A splendid maple tree

Coot on nest with young - Octagon Pond

Wild strawberry

Apple blossom - Walled Garden

Steve Wootten & Phil Coyne

Nature’s dens

February 2019

We were on our way to thin out regenerated birch in West Wood. Left to themselves weedy trees would lose out to stronger ones and die off leaving space for survivors to thrive. Selective removal speeds up the process. Terry and Phil, walking ahead, took a short cut through a stand of beeches. Mary and I, trailing behind, followed. Sensible advice is to take no cut-offs. Crossing a child-built bridge, I slipped and slithered into a ditch taking Mary with me. I’m not sure whether I had held onto Mary for support or if she was attempting to save me. It’s not a very deep ditch.

The bridge of logs

Tightly packed birch trees

Bridges are a side line here. The main business in the beech wood is den building. Kids have probably always loved to build camps and dens – hideaways nested in the branches of trees, a cave hollowed out among bushes, a burrow under a tablecloth, and anything created with a cardboard box and childish imagination.

The beginnings of a den

Getting to work thinning out the birches

Piles of birch brash

Childish fancies and fantasies fade and imagination dulls but, for some, the pleasure of a space of one’s own stays for a lifetime. For the adventurous that might be a tent or a bothy. Some may settle for a favourite corner of a pub, a quiet place in the back garden or in the house, a man-shed, a bench in the local park, a woodland glade. Big skies and open landscapes have a grand magnificence, but the small detail of place provides a different kind of satisfaction.

Being red-jacketed volunteers affords us licence to wander from the tracks and in among the trees. Every nook and cranny is worth close investigation – the exquisite miniature forests of mosses and lichen on fallen logs, bracket fungus decorating dying trees, ferns overhanging a stream, a clearing inviting you to sit and listen to birds and leaves.

Developing bracket fungi on log

Fungi on birch 

Moss & lichen on tree stump

Cladonia coniocraea

Of the many glades, clearings and stream banks of Gibside, there are two that are particularly special. One is in the West Wood – not far off the main track, but far enough to give it the sense of a secret enclave. There are a few older trees, but this area was largely felled about fifteen years ago. Almost thirteen years ago now, it was the site of the very first Conservation Volunteers’ job. Among the desolation left by the cropped timber we built a log pile. It’s still there, surrounded by birch and oak – some twenty feet or more in height. Nearby, nature, with a little help, has fashioned a clearing; a rotting tree trunk provides an uncomfortable seat.

The original log pile

Hazel catkins

Rhododendron bashing

A neat pile of rhododendron brash

At the other end of the estate, perched above Snipes Dene, is the other favourite spot – a clearing amongst old and new growth with another fallen tree to sit on to watch and listen, or just be still: another pretend hideaway, nature’s den.

Snowdrops

Steve Wootten & Phil Coyne

Keeping busy

December 2018 - January 2019

No matter that Louise The Grand Dauphine found the sight of a ha-ha amusing, clearing out a year’s accumulation of wet leaves really isn’t a great deal of fun. Mind you, the landed gentry probably didn’t have to do it themselves. For us it could have been worse. So many times in past years we have stood gradually sinking into mulch and mud, shovelling out soggy leaves into dump bags; their weight requiring three grown people to heave them onto the back of a truck. But it had been freezing overnight and still minus three while we worked. The leaves were frosted crisp and white, and – because it had scarcely rained in weeks – dry. With a full set of rangers and a good turnout of Wednesday volunteers, the job was done in record time. But, at Gibside, there’s always something else to do.

Frost balls

Snow shovels are really useful for clearing the leaves

Leaf piles ready for bagging

Almost finished

We were back to brash clearing in the West Wood. Piling up row upon row of branches, twigs, rotted leaves and some quite substantial logs – the leftovers of clear felling – untangled by hand from a woven mass often two feet or more deep. We have found a few creatures here as we’ve worked but, up until recently, it has been a bleak and barren landscape unappealing to man or mouse. Now that we’ve cleared much of the ground, we’ve planted trees – hundreds of them, nearly all hazel. Bit by bit the landscape is morphing into fields of stakes and tubes. It shouldn’t take long though for the hazel saplings to emerge from their protective plastic, and for the unsightly dead hedges we’ve created to rot down and become overgrown.  Indeed, other plants are already recolonising this temporary desert – holly, chickweed, foxgloves, and birch of course.

Frozen foxgloves

Training session in progress

Planting hazels

A completed section of hazel planting

A welcome cuppa

We’ve left gaps in the dead hedges to create route ways so as not to make life too difficult for the larger mammals that live around here – badger, brown hare, roe deer. And the hedges should quite nicely accommodate smaller mammals, and toads and assorted creepy-crawlies.

The Forestry Commission crop removed from this site was nearly all western hemlock. They took the timber, but the cones and seeds that they left behind will only too soon become seedlings, which will have to come out. That should keep us busy.

Cup lichen ( Cladonia fibriata)

Moss - Polytrichum sp.

Lunch for two

Steve Wootten & Phil Coyne

A bit of a wander

November 2018

A flock of twenty or so long tailed tits accompanied by one great tit cousin seemed not bothered by human presence in their midst. A pair of buzzards cruised overhead, but it was probably the sparrow hawk patrolling the woodland edge that moved them on, and quietened all other birdlife.

Hollow Walk in Autumn

Snipes Dene

The wind hastened the fall of leaves and chased them across the beechwood floor, turning it into a moving carpet of golden-brown. We were in these woods a few weeks ago working alongside gardeners planting wood anemone rhizomes – ten thousand of them. That’s a lot. When they come into life next spring, they should create a natural barrier along the path, discouraging people from trampling the woodland floor with its great variety of invertebrates. Not disturbing the creatures of the woodland floor is a good thing anyway, but this stretch is part of Gibside’s SSSI, so there is an extra duty of care. SSSI – that’s Site of Special Scientific Interest; pronounced tripleesseye.

Not Twiglets but wood anemone rhizomes

Steve prepares a slot for some rhizomes

More of the planting team

Down on Warrenhaugh crows played on the wind over fields now empty of sheep. Further down river jackdaws, like their crow cousins, were enjoying the blustery day until spotting a red kite to harass for a bit before returning to their more innocent game. A heron in stately flight rightly ignored squabbling mallard. It was a good day to be on the wander.

Sunlight through the trees

Nearby, just below the icehouse, Ruth and John were barrowing hefty river-smoothed rocks up an extremely steep path to line a streambed and thereby limit erosion. They had already shored up the stream banks and installed drainage to control the flow of water seeping from the adjacent hillside. They are extraordinary people: Gibside’s own volunteer civil engineers.

Birches in Snipes Dene, before.

The wanderer crossed Ladyhaugh and on to Snipes Dene, where the rest of the team were busy cutting out mainly birch and rhododendron to create a woodland glade. Some larger trees, though, are being spared – only to be ring-barked and left as standing dead wood. Ranger Dan experimented by painting some with blue-dyed herbicide. The glade is to be one of five down this side of the valley, each of about two hundred square metres. It’s all part of a plan made in consultation with the likes of Natural England and the Forestry Commission to encourage a variety of ground flora, and construct habitats attractive to amphibians, reptiles and invertebrates. They would expect that of a triplesseye.

Mike tackles a birch

"Timber!"

Picasso: Herbicide being painted onto ring-barked tree.

"The Wednesday" Glade

Dead Man's Fingers - Xylaria longipes

Whilst eating lunch we "spotted" an eyed ladybird (Anatis ocellata), but unfortunately didn't manage to get a photograph.

Steve Wootten & Phil Coyne