Upland birds training and more work at Fishpond Wood: 12-05-2015

Work at Fishpond Wood continued this week with a rather reduced workforce of 8 (including Paul) owing to:

a) The Heritage Skills students attending a woodcraft day at Thorpe Perrow Arboretum

b) Seven of the NCVs taking up the offer of attending an 'Upland Birds Identification' training session run by Tara Challoner, the Farming and Wildlife officer at the NAONB office.

Whilst the Fishpond Wood crew toiled over more gravel laying and footpath edging, we had the much more civilised option of listening to an interesting presentation from Tara, followed by a trip to both the Lofthouse and Scarhouse areas to spot upland birds. Unfortunately the high winds at Scarhouse meant that we only saw one crow, rather than the ring ouzels we had hoped for, but down at Lofthouse we managed to spot the following:

• a curlew
• lapwings and their gorgeous little chicks
• a snipe
• greylag geese
• meadow pippits
• a wheatear
• a grouse
• pheasants

Two of the group went on to Fishpond Wood to lend a hand after their training only to be regaled with "What time do you call this?!" Hardly surprising really.

Ros E.

Some photos from the day.....

The birdy people out and about enjoying the sun and the birds...

...whilst poor Paul and Osian were busy with 

their shovels and dumper truck.

Graham and Colin had to double up as path edgers and 

gravel spreaders until the cavalry arrived just before 2pm.
Their edging boards soared high above ground to take 
account of a steep slope where a step was needed.

Meanwhile, up at the ice house end of the path other NCVs were also grafting. 
They had the harder task of having to bury the boards into the ground.

They made a see-saw bench for their coffee break.

Didn't they do well? All those boards secured already.

Well done those girls!