Due to technical issues we've had to relocate our blog to Tumblr. We'll leave this blog up as an archive but for all the latest Hazelwood Conservation antics please visit our new one:
http://hazelwoodconservation.tumblr.com/
Ecologists, conservationists and habitat managers; our most interesting antics will be posted here:
Tuesday, 12 April 2016
Tuesday, 15 March 2016
The Nutshell - The seasonal newsletter of Hazelwood Conservation
If you are having problems viewing our newsletter (which should
be displayed above) please click here to be taken to our online version.
Tuesday, 8 September 2015
Bat walking
As well as our professional bat work, surveying buildings, trees and other sites proposed for development, we also offer bat walks and talks to local groups.
Tonight is the turn of "The Friends of Haw Park Wood and Wintersett". Gareth will be leading this enthusiastic group of volunteers into the woods to (hopefully) see and hear some of their very own bats. We'll be starting at Angler's Country Park visitor centre at 7.30pm. All are welcome, see the group's event leaflet for details.
Tonight is the turn of "The Friends of Haw Park Wood and Wintersett". Gareth will be leading this enthusiastic group of volunteers into the woods to (hopefully) see and hear some of their very own bats. We'll be starting at Angler's Country Park visitor centre at 7.30pm. All are welcome, see the group's event leaflet for details.
Tuesday, 28 July 2015
Barn owl survey licences
Following our recent attendance at two excellent courses run by the Barn Owl Trust we are now both registered to use Natural England class licence CL29 - "To survey for barn
owl (Tyto alba) for the purposes of assessing the potential impacts of
future development".
Many of the buildings we already survey for bats in rural areas have the potential to support roosting or nesting barn owl, which are protected from disturbance whilst nesting. This licence will allow us to legally disturb nesting barn owl for the purposes of pre-development surveys.
The welfare of the barn owls is paramount when undertaking surveys - knowing when it is safe to stay or when it is essential to leave a nest site is crucial in ensuring that the eggs or young in the nest are not harmed.
This along with the many useful facts and techniques we learnt on the Barn Owl Trust courses will help us confidently advise our clients on barn owl conservation on their sites.
More details of this and our other recent activities will be in our summer edition of "The Nutshell" which will be available soon....
Many of the buildings we already survey for bats in rural areas have the potential to support roosting or nesting barn owl, which are protected from disturbance whilst nesting. This licence will allow us to legally disturb nesting barn owl for the purposes of pre-development surveys.
 |
| A barn owl chick we got to see up-close whilst on the Barn Owl Trust course |
The welfare of the barn owls is paramount when undertaking surveys - knowing when it is safe to stay or when it is essential to leave a nest site is crucial in ensuring that the eggs or young in the nest are not harmed.
This along with the many useful facts and techniques we learnt on the Barn Owl Trust courses will help us confidently advise our clients on barn owl conservation on their sites.
More details of this and our other recent activities will be in our summer edition of "The Nutshell" which will be available soon....
Tuesday, 7 July 2015
Petrol powered plant punisher
First day at Thunder Bridge Meadows today, cutting Himalayan balsam. It's the first step in a control program which aims to keep this invasive, non-native plant out of the diverse wildflower meadows on this site. Cutting the plants before they can set seed over 2-3 seasons should confine it to the edges of the site along the river and allow the other plants to grow without alien competition to contend with.
Our main weapon today was the powerscythe, a 230cc petrol powered grass cutter which is basically a big set of hedge shears on wheels. It makes short work of the fleshy balsam stems so long as you manage to avoid anything on the ground which might break the teeth; rocks, stumps or sticks that were never retrieved when thrown into the meadow for the dog!
It does have tendency to shake itself to pieces unfortunately, which it duly did by mid-afternoon today! No matter, it did what we needed it to do and the rest we'll tackle with the brush cutter or by hand over the next week or so.
Before we leave the site we make sure everything is cleaned off: boots, tools and the powerscythe to make sure we don't move any seed off site.
We'll be using the powerscythe again at the end of the month to do the annual hay cut here and at Denby Delph, another Garganey Trust site that we help manage.
Tuesday, 30 June 2015
30 Days Wild - Day 30: Saving the bats til last
Well it's the last day of "30 days wild", what shall I post for our last wild activity of the month?....
Why not go for the obvious, which I've somehow managed to avoid posting until now?!
Tonight we'll be be undertaking a bat survey on a site in the hills above Huddersfield. Bat surveys are the mainstay of our work from the end of June through to the end of September, albeit with a scattering of other surveys and habitat management work in between. We usually get called in to survey a building when someone wants to undertake building work that requires planning permission as the planners need to be satisfied that the favourable conservation status of these European protected species will not be significantly affected by the proposals.
Its a habitat assessment and "emergence survey" tonight.
First we'll be checking all around and inside the building in question for bats or signs of bat use which might be droppings, staining or even the sound of bat chatter if there is a big roost present - particularly on a hot day like today. We record all of the features that bats might use for roosting which could be anything from a single bit of missing mortar under a ridge tile, up to a large loft where bats could fly up and down until they're ready to come out after dark.
Once on that's done we set ourselves up in suitable positions outside the building, at least 15 minutes before sunset, waiting for any bats roosting in the building to emerge. Different bat species emerge at different stages of darkness starting with the larger bats (noctule and Leisler's bats), which often come out before sunset and can be easily mistaken for birds flying high across the sky. Then the pipistrelle species are next, which are usually all out within 30 minutes of sunset. At the opposite end of the spectrum the long-eared bats might not emerge from their roosts until 1 hour after sunset, when it's almost completely dark. We watch the building until 1 hour and 30 minutes after sunset to make sure we don't miss any emerging bats.
Every site can come up with surprises, sometimes we don't have a single bat, other nights we might have a soprano pipistrelle maternity roost of 200 bats! Who knows that tonight's survey will bring.
Well done to everyone else who's being taking part in 30 Days Wild.
Why not go for the obvious, which I've somehow managed to avoid posting until now?!
Tonight we'll be be undertaking a bat survey on a site in the hills above Huddersfield. Bat surveys are the mainstay of our work from the end of June through to the end of September, albeit with a scattering of other surveys and habitat management work in between. We usually get called in to survey a building when someone wants to undertake building work that requires planning permission as the planners need to be satisfied that the favourable conservation status of these European protected species will not be significantly affected by the proposals.
Its a habitat assessment and "emergence survey" tonight.
First we'll be checking all around and inside the building in question for bats or signs of bat use which might be droppings, staining or even the sound of bat chatter if there is a big roost present - particularly on a hot day like today. We record all of the features that bats might use for roosting which could be anything from a single bit of missing mortar under a ridge tile, up to a large loft where bats could fly up and down until they're ready to come out after dark.
Once on that's done we set ourselves up in suitable positions outside the building, at least 15 minutes before sunset, waiting for any bats roosting in the building to emerge. Different bat species emerge at different stages of darkness starting with the larger bats (noctule and Leisler's bats), which often come out before sunset and can be easily mistaken for birds flying high across the sky. Then the pipistrelle species are next, which are usually all out within 30 minutes of sunset. At the opposite end of the spectrum the long-eared bats might not emerge from their roosts until 1 hour after sunset, when it's almost completely dark. We watch the building until 1 hour and 30 minutes after sunset to make sure we don't miss any emerging bats.
Every site can come up with surprises, sometimes we don't have a single bat, other nights we might have a soprano pipistrelle maternity roost of 200 bats! Who knows that tonight's survey will bring.
 |
| We don't often get to see bats this close up - this was taken during one of our bat box checks at Seckar Wood |
Well done to everyone else who's being taking part in 30 Days Wild.
Monday, 29 June 2015
30 Days Wild - Day 29: Walkabout
Another office day writing a bat licence application, nothing wild about that!
With a letter to post and a visit to make 2 miles away I decided to ditch the car and get some evening air.
It's not a very picturesque walk but along the way I heard a green woodpecker over the horse fields, I didn't realise we got them so close to home.
There was even a bat circling the house when I got home, there's no getting away from them today!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)